Interesting. But what if it's both? Or maybe there's an interaction (expanding on "taste")? That is, some languages are more expressive and/or powerful than ot

Interesting. But what if it's both? Or maybe there's an interaction (expanding on "taste")? That is, some languages are more expressive and/or powerful than others. Your great programmers will tend to gravitate towards these languages because they're able to spot and leverage their inherent advantages. Conversely, other programmers will appreciate other qualities in languages, which may or may not overlap or interact with expressiveness etc. - e.g. ease (read: familiarity), rich ecosystem (read: lots of libraries and stackoverflow posts).