Mod Lang: What are the features of a modern programming language syntax?

I think that the idea that programmers want to have anonymous functions is hitting on something. I play with Clojure on a semi-frequent basis and find myself often taking advantage of dropping in anonymous functions to my map, reduce, filter, and other functional Clojure built-ins very naturally.

I probably over-do it some - it feels like a bad "code smell" when I wind-up with lots of nested (fn [...] (stuff)) statements in deeper and deeper chunks. I usually pull them out just for my own clarity. Maybe I should make myself a rule to only use one or two anonymous functions.

Lots of fun though. Nothing like coming back to code from two days ago and going "what was I thinking?"