Yes, but that goes both ways: choosing a popular language can be just as fatal as choosing an unpopular language.

If you're a "body shop", then choosing an unpopular language could be fatal, whereas if you're building a specific software product that needs to do certain things on certain platforms, then choosing the language becomes less of a popularity contest and more about how it can help you finish the product quickly with the highest level of quality and performance.

Anytime I see someone bashing Java/PHP/JavaScript on /r/programmerhumor (reddit) I challenge them to a coding contest. I use the language they just bashed, they use their ideal language. No takers yet.

I think, more often than not, language choice is like golf club choice. Different pros have their preferences, but a pro can play a good game with any set of clubs. A novice will blame the clubs for a poor game.

To be fair I don't understand why anyone would bother. I am commenting on a forum, I don't expect to be given homework.

And you can perform carpentry using a big rock instead of a hammer. That doesn't negate any downsides of choosing the rock.

I would say it's more like people are pooh-poohing certain brands of hammers as being inferior to TrendTech Hammers (R) which are "obviously" superior.

The winner will be the one who gets to pick the task for the programming challenge.

Definitely pick the right tool for the right job.

Using C (maybe C++ ?) may be great for micro controllers, a BIOS, a stage 1 bloat loader, OS kernel and device drivers.

If you're writing application software, and probably even server software, you should be using something higher level and a bit more abstracted away from the hardware. Not necessarily by much. But definitely more than C / C++.

I think it does and it doesn't. It really depends on what your end goal is. Writing a web application? Not sure it really matters much if you use Python/Django, Ruby/Rails, Java/Spring. Just use what you (or the developers) are most comfortable with. Trying to make a game engine for AAA games? Yeah your not going to get away with Ruby or Python.

> Writing a web application? Not sure it really matters much if you use Python/Django, Ruby/Rails, Java/Spring. Just use what you (or the developers) are most comfortable with.

It might matter if you used COBOL, though. Or even C++.