You've definitely got some valid points. I think I may be biased toward Ruby and...

You've definitely got some valid points. I think I may be biased toward Ruby and Python because I like programming in them so much, in addition to the fact that I feel that my knowledge of them directly contributed to the quality and quantity of job offers I received when I was on the market.

My enjoyment of programming in Ruby and Python may have something to do with them both being scripting languages, and having easily-accessible REPLs (for the uninitiated: Read-Eval-Print-Loops, like irb, a program I mention and show example output from in my post). In addition, scripting languages just... feel easier. If you've got Python installed on your computer, go ahead and pop up a terminal if you'd like to follow along:

  [jrheard@jrheard:~]$ python
  >>> import webbrowser
  >>> webbrowser.open_new('http://google.com')
  True

If you weren't following along: Firefox just opened a new tab with Google in it! Isn't that awesome? How many lines would that be in C?

  >>> import urllib
  >>> goog = urllib.urlopen('http://google.com')
  >>> page_source = goog.read()
  >>> len(page_source)
  6917
  >>> page_source[:27]
  '<!doctype html><html><head>'

The real power of Python and Ruby is that I can do awesome stuff without even thinking about it. At all. At least half the time I have a problem, the most I have to do is one Google search to find the built-in library I need.

The point I'm trying to make is that, syntax aside, I feel like Python and Ruby just get out of my way most of the time, so I can focus on solving problems and learning programming concepts I can learn in any language.

Jeff Atwood sums up a lot of my sentiments in his post "A Scripter At Heart", which you can read at http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2009/01/a-scripter-at-heart... .