That's COMPLETELY incorrect. I have been following blogs of CLR team and C# compiler team members and they think very hard about whether a feature needs to be a compiler feature or in the runtime itself. If they are short on manpower, they don't implement a feature rather than implementing it at the wrong level.

Since you probably haven't been following my comments here on HN: I work at Microsoft on a very C#-centric team. I have good friends on, and direct working relationships with, the managed languages teams here at Microsoft.

The "wrong level" corresponds to the goals and direction of the greater managed languages team. If the C# team wanted to implement every feature without any regard for the Visual Basic or F# team, they could. Clearly, they aren't going to do this because it creates wasted effort, inconsistency between languages, and maintainence complexity. Moreover, implementing on the wrong level has impact on performance and the developer experience.

I didn't mean to imply that they do the wrong thing because they are short on man power. On the contrary, they do the right thing because they are short on manpower.

Everything could be a compiler trick, but that doesn't mean everything should be. The managed languages teams here at Microsoft absolutely kick ass; they know what they are doing.