Nearly all the comments so far focus on neophile vs. neophobe. But I took the main point of his post to be orthogonal to that: Dianne took time to ask questions

Nearly all the comments so far focus on neophile vs. neophobe. But I took the main point of his post to be orthogonal to that: Dianne took time to ask questions. She didn't immediately dive in and start using her {comfortable old tool, sexy new tool}. She asked about the requirements: Estimated user count, load, connection quality, etc. That's the key point. A developer with good judgment will start there. A developer with good judgment might even raise their hand and say, "As I understand this problem, it requires technologies I'm not so good at. What should we do?" There are exceptions to every rule, and all sorts of projects. But in general, that seems like the sort of developer you want to hire.