Do Programming Languages Matter That Much? (Score 1, Insightful)

It seems that the previous replies discuss the pros and cons of VB per se. In a more general sense, they're discussing whether one programming language is better than another.

Does the choice of the programming language really matter that much? From my humble experience, I've noticed that programmers' output depends on other things entirely, such as their development methodology, and correct use of design patterns (not going too far in either direction).

I've actually seen different programmers write projects in different languages, and it seemed their output was relatively uniform (the good ones did well in each language, and produced code that had a 1-1 correspondence with what they would have done in a different language). Stuff like test-driven design (and other XP methodology), for example, has a more dramatic impact than the debugger of the IDE of the language that your using (which I avoid anyway). You can encapsulate stuff (to some degree) in any language, as is the same for abstracting things that may vary.

In some rare cases, some things can't be done in some languages (and I'm not talking about Turing completeness): there are deffinitely programs that you _cannot_ write to execute as efficiently in Python as in C. Given that you already have a prior version in VB, is this really your case?

So overall, I think that if your project is large, then amortized over time, you will produce the same results anyway (because getting used to the language will be averaged over time), and if the project is small, what's the difference anyway?

BTW, mod me down to your heart's content, but I'd appreciate some reply with content if you disagree (perhaps I'm wrong, who knows?).