[Joeboy]

That's absolutely right. I've established that there's a market for digging trenches for subterranean cables, and my decision to use teaspoons instead of pneumatic drills and mechanical diggers has no bearing whatsoever on my venture's prospects.

[ryanwaggoner]

That would be a very valid analogy if no other trenches had been dug with teaspoons, but a high percentage have, including some of the largest and most successful.

[Joeboy]

The analogy wasn't particularly about PHP, it was about tools.

It might be true that the choice of tool is irrelevant to an end user, investor or other person that's not capable of or interested in judging the tool's merits, but if you're actually trying to build something the choice of tool matters quite a lot. The fact ryannielson doesn't know or care what I do all day doesn't help me get stuff done.

Epilogue: The company I work for recently bought a Content Management System / web framework for half a million bucks, then spent another half a million bucks trying to make it work, then abandoned it in favour of the system we were running before. I think the decision to go with that tool was a poor one.