My understanding is as follows:
a. A good developer should be able to know a few languages, and to keep on learning new languages.
b. In theory you pick the best language depending on the requirements of the project.
a. A good developer should be able to know a few languages, and to keep on learning new languages.
b. In theory you pick the best language depending on the requirements of the project.
In all reality, let's say someone were to build "simple" web applications.....by which I mean...a twitter clone etc., would it really make that big of a difference if I chose Clojure or PHP vs. ROR.
Maybe I am ignorant about the nuances of these platforms, but from a birds eye view, they all look able to perform the same tasks.
If you're not doing the work yourself create wireframe and/or spec of the project and talk to a few programmers. If you are doing the work yourself and getting started maybe how easy the language is to learn might be a factor.
Also if you are building a Twitter clone I'm assuming that you'd also need a database -- so there might be more things to think about as well.