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I disagree - choosing a language is not choosing a placebo. Languages are tools, and need to be chosen appropriately. Often the exact choice will not matter (compare Java/C# or Python/Ruby), but sometimes it will.

"it's not for me" is not a valid excuse, it means you cannot handle the tool. This is your fault. A valid excuse is "it's not for my application domain".

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Languages are tools to be used by people, not by identical automatons. "This tool doesn't mesh well with the way I approach this class of problems" is a perfectly valid objection.

In my case it's more often "this language makes tradeoffs that are counter to the way I want to work". E.G. I won't touch C++ with a 10 foot pole because I believe it's the compilers duty to track down and at least warn me about as many errors in my code as possible, and C++ seems to go out of its way to allow you to introduce subtle and hard to find bugs. I've worked in a ton of languages from nearly every paradigm (no logic languages yet) and in each one I've found at least one language that works best for me, or best in a particular problem space. Some of that choice is based on need (must be able to search text easily, must have a strong HTTP framework, must have a nice cross-platform GUI, must have strong matrix math framework, etc.), and some of it is based on preference (prefer strong typing, prefer meta-programming features, prefer garbage collection).

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