Rails has won: The Elephant in the Room
I'm sure I'm going to get piled on here, but whatever.  I don't understand why those who spend most of their time writing web apps / CRUD apps focus so much on the tools they use to do it.  "This framework's the best!"  "No, this one is obviously better!" "My design pattern is better than your design pattern!"<p>I don't know, maybe I'm a 32 year old curmudgeon, but I just don't see this in my area.  I work at a lower level; robotics, image processing/analysis, and general systems level stuff.  We worry about what technologies we use for a given task as far as it impacts our design goals, i.e., "which technology is best suited for the job" (and there are more options nowadays than there used to be).  Our customers couldn't care less about how we got there as long as the final product kicks ass.<p>Once we arrive at a conclusion we move on and spend the remaining 99% of development solving actual problems.  Hard problems. Often times unsolved problems.  Our number one priority is reliability and accuracy (ok, that's two priorities).  Whether or not we used e.g. C++ or Python to do it is irrelevant.  What matters is that <i>we built a system which works as it is supposed to and was engineered correctly.</i><p>I don't understand this 'programming for programming's sake' mentality.  At the end of the day these are just tools, not an end goal.  Help me to understand.