Much of today’s buzz is about alternative programming languages, and the pitch often emphasizes “increased developer productivity” (IMHO, a sham on multideveloper projects). As long as the language has garbage collection, strings, real types, and so on, it shouldn’t matter. This means nearly anything at a higher level than C or its mangled Neanderthal cousin C++ should reap the same productivity out of your developers.
That said, a shiny new hammer will always be tempting to those who get infatuated with their tools. But to pitch a switch to another programming language, you need to prove to your boss that the transition costs aren’t ridiculously high. Here I would agree with the proselytizers for change. It doesn’t take much to train good developers to learn a new language — so I decided to prove it.