I'd disagree with you. I have a CS degree, and knowing the basics of Computer Architecture doesn't do anything to people participating in debates over software

I'd disagree with you. I have a CS degree, and knowing the basics of Computer Architecture doesn't do anything to people participating in debates over software development tools. If anything it should make you realize that tooling is very important, as you get to experience first hand the enormous increases of potency each abstraction level gives you, from electronic gates to bit codes to asm to C to Smalltalk or Lisp. If any of those levels opened up your eyes to the power of tools, why wouldn't it open your eyes to many other technologies? Some good fundaments for your arguments make sure you can build a good opinion. I like Ruby because its object model is near perfect, I like C# because it's got one of the most powerful syntaxes out there, I like Haskell because of the incredibly pure functional style and I like Javascript because it runs in the browser (of course I write CoffeeScript so I don't have to deal with some of its failures). Do I think these technologies could be better? Yes, but that doesn't mean they're window dressing, and it doesn't mean I'm not optimistic about them. Also, I'd definitely argue the crap out of anyone who dares to disagree ;)