Research is by nature high risk/high reward. In most fields, it takes years for research to make it into an actual product. Programming language research doesn't stop at developing new languages. Automated testing tools like Microsoft's PEX fall under the same umbrella of formal methods.

Even if the research doesn't affect a completely new programming language, it could very likely have a strong hand in updating old ones. See programming language memory models for instance.

Very few languages are truly groundbreaking. Most are simply refinements of existing ideas (doesn't necessarily mean that they're not a step forward). If you're interested in something earth-shatteringly different, you're going to need to look into programming language research to find it (One great reference that could probably answer this question better is http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/).

For examples of a recent-ish language that was developed by a professor at UIUC, see http://maude.cs.uiuc.edu/, which is based on rewriting logic and is currently still being developed/refined. But even that has strong ties to a previous language OBJ by the same creator.

If you're interested in learning something really different but a bit easier/more fun, I would strongly recommend Prolog. Schapiro has a great book (http://www.amazon.com/Art-Prolog-Second-Programming-Techniqu...).

another step forward in lazyness : pure

http://code.google.com/p/pure-lang/

it's almost formal math, quite cool

Am I the only one who read through the article looking for where Binary Decision Diagrams came in?

Yeah, I got paste all that. It was the compilation stage that was the real brain bender.

Maybe you should start with a language in which compilation is simple, like Forth: http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/forth/gforth/Docs-html/

maude: http://maude.cs.uiuc.edu/

#define struct union

That is by far the evilest of the bunch. }:-D

The various grammatical errors picked my interest as well.

You mean like using the word "picked" instead of "piqued?"

That's great, next time we'll debate in my native tongue, I'm sure your grammatical errors will pique mine.