These are all valid, accurate points... but can we humble employees get our directors to listen to them?

I think that the opposing viewpoint is based on a very simple thing... marketing. Marketing, rather than programmer skill or the strengths of the language has been the foundation for the success of the languages pushed by the largest software company.

Now, don't get me wrong... I agree that Perl is a valid choice and, for me, it's the best choice. But, in my limited experience, I've known too many IT managers and directors whose only skillset was "management". I know that none of them would bother to read anything as technical as PerlMonks :)

They tend to play it safe in order to hide the fact that they don't know anything. They will choose the language pushed by the best known company if they have the budget to pay for the development tools. As a second choice they choose Java because it's the second best known platform. They may try to sell it in their meetings as a money saving initiative. They'll pretend to be innovative, but they're still just playing it safe.

I know this has already been said: In truth, the language choice doesn't matter much in many work environments. It's the skill and creativity of the developers. For example, I could build a very capable CGI Web Application using Bash shell script. If I was pressed to do it, I might even be able to do it with a DOS batch file (I'd quit the job first).

My opinion is based on experience, but only very limited experience. I have no formal education and, because of that, I have (happily) never been in management. I've only been working in this field for about 5 years. The only reason I can maintain a career in this field, and participate in conversations here, is because I take a certain masochistic pleasure in reading documentation from the first page to the last... and luck.

So, my perspective is bound to be different, but not wholly unique.

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-- GhodMode