Sorry, I don't have the luxury of bigotry. I am fluent in everything between assembly (although not to the degree I was many years ago) and .NET, and that diversity allows me to delivery what's needed by my clients. Investing in a career isn't all that unlike the markets; I have to choose to diversify my knowledge portfolio enough that I am able to respond to trends as they present themselves, but not so little that my lack of exposure limits me. I and many thousands of others are successfully deploying .NET solutions to everyone from IBM to Microsoft themselves, and I've made a substantial living doing so. To consider that planned obsolescence is rather myopic, but again... it's your choice. If you were fluent in .NET I could have you with a job tomorrow that pays well over six figures. You might not like it, but that's the trend at the moment, and only an idiot would sit back on their anti-MS principles and deny it. I've owned a consulting practice for five years now (professional developer long before that), and not once have I encountered a worthwhile project that required anything but C++, Java, or .NET. .NET is huge at the moment. Believe it.
Can't disagree with you there. What constitutes the best is obviously very subjective. The best is that which allows me to achieve whatever goals I have, and for a trader that might be anything from a lesser-known (to the investor community at least, not the trader community) Wealth Lab to the ubiquitous TradeStation. The ultimate goal of trading is to achieve greater wealth and have some fun while doing it (at least for me) , yes? So, for me, tools that offer user-friendly strategy-creation methods are more of a hindrance than anything else, so I choose tools with less out-of-the-box functionality and more flexibility. QuantDeveloper is more my speed for a lot of things, but Wealth Lab is as well.
So, utilizing the above reasoning the best development platform choice simply won't be, can't be, that of Perl or Python. I know Perl better than I do Python, but I also know that investing a substantial amount of time in either language is a limited return proposition. If I was more of a Python or Perl expert I'd be lucky to make $15/hr developing systems administration scripts in a cube somewhere. Having profound knowledge of Java, .NET, application architecture, etc. allows me to work on large projects with a substantial payout. Which has the greater return? If you don't believe me then look at any metric that has been developed for the software industry.
I'm no zealot, but I'm no bigot either. To use the cliche: Use the right tool for the right job.
Likewise.
