While I don't know Mr. Swaine's qualifications, it has always seemed rather pointless to me to worry very much about what anyone who isn't very familiar with a language has to say about it. I write most of my code for work in Common Lisp, Perl, and (just now starting) Smalltalk, and on the occasions when I might discuss this with others, it's quite interesting to hear just how many misconceptions they have about these languages. When it comes to language advocacy, I think it's much more appropriate to talk about all the wonderful things one's own favorite(s) can do than what others can't, if for no other reason than one is often (though not always) less knowledgable about those others.