By many people I met over the years of my professional career as a software engineer, programming languages seem to be vastly overrated. Every now and then I see a battle of this language against that language and a flame war and a shit storm. To what extend - I don't know.
For me, languages are tools, no more no less. They are tools for humans to formulate repeatable problem solutions in a way a computer and other humans can deal with. Some languages fit better to that solution and some to another. Some ecosystems have that benefit and that drawback, some another. But, no single language supports you in finding the solution for the problem in question. And that's the crucial point of engineering, to find solutions. Programming, in essence, is selection or creation of Algorithms, and not simply coding.
I never made a big deal about the language I use, and I used a lot. If I have to learn another, I do it, simple as that. Sure, I have a sense of beauty or smartness of a particular language, but in the end of the day I try to choose the right tool for my particular solution. And that's what I care about the most, the solution, the algorithm. Moreover, this is the right starting point for optimizations by the way. I even helped optimizing code in languages I never used before just by analyzing the algorithmic complexity of the particular solution, an approach many programmers obviously have forgotten while discussing questions like: which language is the fastest.
It's rather similar to what Nietzsche once said - who spoke a number of contemporary and ancient languages fluently -: it does not count how many languages you do know or do not know, what counts is if you have something to say in the first place. This is why I spent more time reading papers or books about algorithms instead of the most fancy "Programming in XYZ". If one has something to say, he or she will find a way to say it. If one has not - no language can help.
