Been holding this one back for awhile, but: Are there any talks, plans or otherwise on incorporating other languages for client-side scripting? I'd really just like to get away from JS in general :(
IMHO it will never happen in the sense you imagine it but we'll see.
In the meantime you may want to check out emscripten (http://code.google.com/p/emscripten/). It is a JavaScript backend for LLVM which ultimately leads to the same functionality as having other languages on the client.