True. But no harm in getting it off the ground quickly before optimising. Git was written in Perl originally, and ported bit by bit to C. I think this shows it can be a good way to work -- prototype quickly, then optimise.
This. You can bicker all day long about the "correct" language to write something in but at the end of that long day of going back and forth nothing actually got written. Better to go with what you know and prototype then weigh the benefits of rewriting/refactoring it in another language/toolchain.