I read this as saying web applications allow individual developers to pick their programming language whereas desktop applications didn't. That doesn't sound ri

I read this as saying web applications allow individual developers to pick their programming language whereas desktop applications didn't. That doesn't sound right. Yes, with web applications, the developer (read:company) gets to pick the language and tools used and not the users. But this is the same with desktop software. I've shipped desktop software written in Dolphin Smalltalk. The users didn't stop me. They don't even care what it's written in as long as it worked. And in either case, the decision maker is still the company, not the individual developer, though the company may delegate that decision to an individual developer, especially for smaller companies. The individual developer didn't have increased freedom to pick and choose because these are web applications. So nothing has changed because those are web applications. What has changed is more and more companies, especially smaller ones or those that has a deep software engineering culture recognises that using a different programming language matters in terms of productivity.