>Probably a cleaner approach to these enhancements would be to just create namespaces for them and have standard and similar constructs ( if really necessary) in both languages to access/use them ( dont pollute the language just to make a feature easier to use in one vs the other).

Well, that's what they try to do as far as possible. It is not exactly so in the case of XML literals. They are embedded into the language.

>As far as VB and the approach, whats trendy today may be obsolete tomorrow, so I would not bend the language to suit a certain trend.
>IDE tools, and as you said, helpers, as blocks/api/classes could do just that.

Well, that's the point about it. You're reasoning like the C# team. The VB team is taking a bit more of a risk to make things easier for the developers now. I see this is the trend, generally speaking.

>I guess java is still a good example to follow in terms of keeping the language isolated of features/packages/constructs.

Yes, it is. The .NET Framework evolving as a separate entity is making that easier for the languages.

Regards,