I believe that it’s not the language, specifically, that is used that will determine the success of a (software) development project; it’s the design of the system as a whole and the considerations made in the Planning and/or Analyze phase of the project.
I really bothers me when I hear people (developers are people, aren’t we?) saying “You must use OOP for this…”, or “Java is the best for that…”, or anything even vaguely similar to those sentiments. A poorly designed application using Ruby will fail just as miserably as one using PHP or Java. I primarily develop in PHP, but I know that it’s not the best choice for everything… I wouldn’t even suggest that it is; but when techno-religious zealots rise up from their pulpits it gets me spun up like mad!
And it’s not just developers; it’s folks in the Program management world, as well. Take software development and the oh-so familiar Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC). Software development and web development are not the same: stop treating them like they can be managed the same way. Sure there are similarities, but there are huge, gaping chasms of differences as well. You cannot take the same processes for software and expect them to work every time in a web development project.
I guess I’m done with my rant now… Oh, and for the record, Grefo, I’d like a strawberry PB & J.