Personally I don't think Python is good enough. It is OK, but better things can be imagined. For example I don't like the crippled lambda.

I prefer the crippled lambda. If you need more than a simple expression, you should write another function anyways. The restriction leads towards easier to read/maintain code.

lambda is quite crippled I agree, but if you have to port your code to C for performance reasons, it's good not to have to port them as well :)

And, when C isn't fast enough, VHDL ;-)

No. Not really. I keep promising myself I'll learn it, but, so far, the goodness of the excuse to learn it does not outweight the lack of time.

Actually you can jump back up the ladder a bit by using MyHDL, a Python module which compiles your Python down to either Verilog or VHDL. http://www.myhdl.org/doku.php

I studied VHDL extensively at university as well as semiconductor physics (I did microelectronics). I'd like to go back to that level - it's great fun but too many problems are utterly abstract now for anyone to care about it any more.

However, always make time for stuff that's interesting :)

I would say Python is my favorite language at the moment too. But gosh can it be improved. You seem to imply in your post that Dart is gonna be a specialized niche language. Not necessarily. Just because they announce it as a PL for web programming doesn't mean it couldn't be a general purpose PL.