It was hard to really see the author as being objective on the subject after reading the experiment that pitted Perl/Python programs against Java/C++ programs in an application requiring "string manipulation and searching against a dictionary". I'm all for trying to prove this point empirically (though I disagree with the author's stance), but in the least you've got to eliminate as many of these variables as possible (e.g. choosing typed languages that have similar string manipulation and sane collection libraries rather than pretending like working with Java HashMaps is anything near a Python dict).

Other than that, I'd say skip the over dramatized dogma and just pick the tool that suits your problem space best.