Having followed language wars for a while as a relative newcomer to programming (longtime lab rat type), my present conclusion is that languages are just tools,

Having followed language wars for a while as a relative newcomer to programming (longtime lab rat type), my present conclusion is that languages are just tools, comparable in my experience to different laboratory techniques and instrumentation. Different tools are appropriate for different purposes. Some are a lot less convenient than others to set up and use. Some are so obscure that nobody really supports them anymore, and if you want to use them you'll have little help with troubleshooting. Some are popular fads that come and go, as people realize there are better options available for particular jobs. Once you learn how to use one set of tooling well, it's not so hard to jump over to another one if you get a job in a lab that relies heavily on it. Same with languages. Fanatical adherents of one option or another often have some ulterior motive ... like the lab who spent $2 million on that high-field NMR spectroscopy machine and is always trying to get people to use it so they can can get some co-author publications. Often the most vitriolic fights are over some technical detail or other that doesn't apply to the vast majority of use cases. Conclusion: meh. Of course Python and C++ are the superior options, however. Plus C for things like writing low-level code for firmware etc. The fact that these are the only languages I have any experience with is entirely incidental to the truth of this claim.