I think it comes down to playing to the strengths of the tools — but anybody who gets overly granular about this is misguided.
A lot of tools are in the same "class" of utility. Ruby probably is not the right tool for the job if you're writing an operating system. If you're creating a web app, it's likely not to matter whether you go with Ruby or Python — but if you're doing academic research it probably will matter. Not because Python is inherently better at that stuff, but it's just more the default accepted by that community. You're rowing upstream already if you choose something else just for the sake of it.
A lot of people can over-index on this. The right tool is often the one you are most comfortable with using. And when you're working on legacy systems, you're not necessarily helping by trying to use the best tool for the job instead of what's already in place.
I think it comes down to playing to the strengths of the tools — but anybody who gets overly granular about this is misguided.
A lot of tools are in the same "class" of utility. Ruby probably is not the right tool for the job if you're writing an operating system. If you're creating a web app, it's likely not to matter whether you go with Ruby or Python — but if you're doing academic research it probably will matter. Not because Python is inherently better at that stuff, but it's just more the default accepted by that community. You're rowing upstream already if you choose something else just for the sake of it.
A lot of people can over-index on this. The right tool is often the one you are most comfortable with using. And when you're working on legacy systems, you're not necessarily helping by trying to use the best tool for the job instead of what's already in place.
Can you tell if a web app is made using Ruby or Python or PHP? If you can't tell it really doesn't matter!