Mono

I have been progressively more vocal about Second Life's scripting language inadequacies. While the syntax is simple enough it lacks the ability to be versatile, it in my opinion doesn't measure up to the creative people doing projects and programming in Second Life.

While I am sure the LSL is "Turing Complete" it is slow and lacks a lot of feature available in languages such as python, java, ruby..etc. Moreover, LSL lacks the libraries and the huge communities developing those libraries and other applications. However this is about to change. Linden Lab has started moving to Mono a C# like language. This move could very much be the deciding factor for the future of Second Life and Linden Labs.

Less important in my opinion is the fact that mono scripts run 220 times faster than their LSL2 counterpart. Yet a welcomed addition

Mono, will allow developers to program more flawlessly, focusing on content rather than spending time struggling with LSL.

[book] Platform Second Life

Whether Second Life will be the platform of the future or not is not the issue here. It is that people are starting to see the role that virtual environments can play in providing real life applications by being the delivery platform.