But then you have to make the language and syntax flexible enough to deal with that – while also retaining ease of use, compilation speed (you don't want to go into C++ territory there) and perhaps other factors. All in all it's probably a tradeoff and regardless which way it sways, people are inconvenienced by it.

And arguably there are other languages which can and do fix that gap. Nemerle comes to mind. .NET allows you to mix languages freely so I think switching for parts where it makes sense isn't such a bad idea.