ASP.NET is finally getting the idea of alternative template engines. That is one great point about Python, Ruby, PHP etc is there are many template alternatives for all levels of simplifying templates so that they aren't so glued to the controller or renderer.
This makes it easy to swap out basic html/javascript templates and use them in complex systems without mounds of work.
The driving philosophy of these engines is that your presentation layer should not contain any logic that goes beyond the rendering of data, and your templating should be an aid to outputting HTML, not merely a medium.
Take Django templates, for example: you output data using tags and filters, with support for defining commonly-used blocks of HTML to reduce redundancy.
Take Haml, which uses CSS selector syntax to reduce the amount of HTML boileplate to a bare minimum.
The common factor of these engines is that your end up writing less code than plain HTML, and unlike this new engine for ASP, the mixing of code and presentation doesn't look completely horrendous.
I like subtle nods and references by MS towards Lotus Notes since Ray Ozzie went to MS - or is it only in my head?