"When programmers embed their choice so deeply into their psyche that it becomes the tagline by which they identify themselves... Do you, the customer, really care what kind of tools they use?"
The customer probably doesn't care, but recruiters certainly do. They want a 'C# developer' or 'experience of VB.NET' rather than a 'good programmer', which is probably what they should be looking for.
If the writer is saying he'd avoid working with someone who would only use his own favourite language no matter what, then I'd agree with him. However, I'd also be suspicious of an experienced programmer who didn't have strong views on operating systems, languages, and text editors/IDEs. If you don't care about these things, you probably don't care about programming.
The customer probably doesn't care, but recruiters certainly do. They want a 'C# developer' or 'experience of VB.NET' rather than a 'good programmer', which is probably what they should be looking for.
If the writer is saying he'd avoid working with someone who would only use his own favourite language no matter what, then I'd agree with him. However, I'd also be suspicious of an experienced programmer who didn't have strong views on operating systems, languages, and text editors/IDEs. If you don't care about these things, you probably don't care about programming.