[collyw]

I would suggest the opposite. Learning a new language will do you good. I use Django, because the documentation was really good for my level of experience (I had tried couple of Perl frameworks before, but never got my head around them - Django was explained a lot better). Now I know Python - its not hard to learn, and once you know some idioms its way more expressive than Java. Scala might be a good option. Then you use the same ecosystem, but learn a more expressive language.

[mattwritescode]

Yes learning is good but if her/him is looking to build something fast and get the job done learning a new language whilst doing this is not really very feasible.

There is the time for development and the time for learning.

[collyw]

I personally found that moving from Perl to Python, I gained a lot, despite taking on a new language. Django was way better documented (for relative newcomers to web programming) than the Perl options I tried, and the Admin application got me up and running with something usable pretty quickly.