Personally, from a conceptual level, I find that Koka and Roc provide some of the more interesting developments in PL design. For anyone wondering, as to Roc (which I don’t think has an implementation or even a full description yet) I am particularly interested in their concept and implementation of the ‘platform’/‘application’ layer idea. As to Koka, the papers the team has generated are almost all excellent. The paper describing Perseus, the GC/resource tracking system, and the compiler implementation review are stunning.