I was careful not to say F# caused functional features to appear, only the timeline. I also noted all the features they added were purely for LINQ. So it does feel, to an outsider, that C# only obtained its functional features by happenstance. Had someone without Meijer's intent gone for a LINQ feature, maybe a different approach may have been taken. I get the feeling he was like a covert agent, dangling this easy way to get LINQ, to entice other employees into accidentally allowing such powerful features in, or as I believe he says in that paper "well even VB now has monads".

Sorry if I somehow misinterpreted it.

Yeah, LINQ was what got enterprise developers slowly started into the FP world.