Well, in 2001 the hot web languages were Perl and PHP and CPAN was already riding high. I think this argument in some ways hinges on how far from the tree you'

Well, in 2001 the hot web languages were Perl and PHP and CPAN was already riding high. I think this argument in some ways hinges on how far from the tree you're falling. If you're doing essentially a variation on a common theme, you'll be the fastest by picking a language where the bulk of the work is already done for you in a variety of reusable modules. It'd have to be a really poor language for its badness to outweigh having most of the work done for you up front. If, however, you're starting from scratch on something relatively novel, e.g. where Viaweb was in 1996 (and not so much in 2001), then it's true, you should write in the language that fits the bill rather than following the course of momentum. One proviso I would add there though is that Lisp is in the position of being fairly mature and non-traditional, unlike many flavor-of-the-weeks. There are many pains to be found in using tools which haven't stabilized yet, even if they do have a gee-whiz-bang factor. As to your postscript, Google does also extensively use C++; I think that's still fairly common in high-performance stuff at the lower levels.