Shady government-sanctioned telecom monopoly certainly does not qualify as a free market. Demublican-supported big-corp hookups are not at all what free market advocates have in mind.

I think the GP is trying to tell you that you need to get familiar with that other language. It takes more time, and for a good reason. You won't just be learning a new API, you'll be getting used to a new way of thinking. And programming is all about knowing the different ways of thinking.

I think that the parent was referring to the fact that:
* C, Perl and Ruby are mostly used to write standalone utilities and apps
* Javascript is used to script the high-level functionality of a browser (albeit to produce more apps too, sometimes)

So it's not about compiled vs interpreted, or memory management models. It's about actual practical usage scenarios. And lumping Ruby and Javascript is indeed silly in that sense.

Your first sentence is bang-on about the effects of first-past-the-post. But I think that it is a good idea to let one party actually have full swing in its decisions from time to time.

As geeks, we always complain about "design-by-committee" situations. I think that a bickering and fragmented parliament falls right under the same label. Another phrase that comes to mind is "analysis paralysis", except as applied to government decisions.

In general, politics are notorious for being populist and catering to the superficial wants of voters. An "imbalance" of representation that first-past-the-post allows may actually work against that populism and let gov't pass unpopular measures that actually do the job better. And I think that far too many good ideas are not even considered due to not being "sexy" enough to sell to an average voter who may not know what "fiduciary" means.