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Solving today's problem with yesterday's tools might not be that smart - but it is a lot smarter than solving today's problems with tomorrow's tools.
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While I've seen failures in all, I have actually yet to see what I would consider a success with something written in a language other than C++ or C#, at least recently. And by success, I mean what's on the inside as well as what's on the outside.
Farcebook, for example, doesn't count, as according to Quora:
Most of it is written in PHP running on top of some software called HiPHoP they created, which basicly allows php to be compiled and run magnitudes faster.
Marc
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There was a company that sold an MRP (Manufacturing Resource Planning) package called BPCS running on the IBM AS/400 and written in RPG.
Around 20 years ago, they were bitten by the Unix/C bug and decided to rewrite their software.
$400 million later (that was their annual sales, all from the RPG-based software, not profit), they went under.
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Vivic wrote: they were bitten by the Unix/C bug and decided to rewrite their software.
Well, that was the problem -- Unix!
Marc
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They still use it where I work.  Even twenty year old interfaces beat the pants off that monstrosity! Just the fact that I'm responding to a BPCS reference requires more 'unwell' emoteicons -
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I remember some other company bought out BPCS.
I am surprised your company hasn't moved to Oracle or SAP.
My employer was using not BPCS but a competing package from Computer Associates.
Consultants came in and recommended SAP.
This was a company with $900 million in sales but our total product list was 400 products, customer list was 1,200.
On top of that with 2 major product lines each trading places every 18 months, we either had 7 customers or 100 customers.
It should have been run off a PC but connectivity for 250+ employees and security considerations dictated a midrange AS/400.
Management blew $40+ million on the SAP implementation!
Such is life.
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Funnily, I once had to learn RPG as part of a similar porting effort. It went swimmingly, was completed in 6 months. I bumped into an old colleague recently and its still in use today and profitable.
ps. No one should ever, ever, ever, have to program in RPG.
"If you don't fail at least 90 percent of the time, you're not aiming high enough."
Alan Kay.
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Report Program Generator (RPG) is a joke perpetrated on the programming public by some IBMer.
As a name, I mean.
Very few people understand how this language came about.
The old IBM 407 accounting machines were controlled by a plug board where one wired up a "program" to perform specific calculations.
The program always would follow this following format:
Read a card
Use the values on the card and perform the required computation
Print a line of output
Repeat.
That is exactly the format used for programming in RPG. The idea was that you could get the folks who did the plug board wiring to program the IBM System/3 which IBM hoped would wean small companies away from the electromechanical relay based accounting machines.
Later more control structures were added to this cycle and you ended up with RPG IV but the basic cycle remains unaltered.
The interesting thing is that a machine like the AS/400 could "eat DEC's lunch", to quote Ken Olson of DEC.
Other than PCs, it probably is the only machine to reach sales in excess of 1 million. Today, you could network several of them together and such a network would rival the power of mainframes.
And like COBOL, RPG is another language that would never quit.
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Yep, when dealing with RPG, its nature is very evident (at least to someone who, as a child, saw punched cards being used to program a computer, my mother learned programming as part of a maths degree, and we a fairly endless supply of punched cards around the house that were used as partly a study aid, partly as a construction toy).
I also remember that the first few columns of a source file (if "file" can be applied to something on the AS/400) were reserved for indicators, types (single letters) and other abuses. Probably the worst programming language I've ever come across (at least amongst those that are not intentionally bad, like brainfuck).
<<shudder>>.
"If you don't fail at least 90 percent of the time, you're not aiming high enough."
Alan Kay.
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No matter what your style of coding is, it should follow one rule: Keep It Simple, Stupid! There is no silver bullet (but sometimes you just need a simple bullet)
But why is the article so long (and unsimple?) 
Also, where have I seen this clever fellow before? 
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Simple Programmer wrote: Keep It Simple, Stupid!
FTFT
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And it's 25% more simple!
TTFN - Kent
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But I like calling people stupid... 
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Yet it's generally not worth the effort.
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Always followed the KISS principle and try avoid the spaghetti soup of acronymic design pattern pattern munching crap that abounds in our business.
If a design isn't simple and sensible, it's probably wrong.
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To be fair, KISS really is an acronym. Ironically TLA (Three Letter Acronyms) isn't, its an Initialism.
(Its my new pedantry campaign, in case you were wondering).
"If you don't fail at least 90 percent of the time, you're not aiming high enough."
Alan Kay.
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TL;DR
But I do (of course) have this to say -- code is not a uniform universe with only a few microkelvin degrees of background radiation to differentiate it. I have, for example, some relatively complex code that makes my life way way simpler at higher levels.
So, for example, an asynchronous pub/sub subscriber, or a state machine with transition rules and state events, isn't necessarily simple as a concept nor simple as an implementation. But it lets me write code at the application level that is a lot simpler.
All that "simple" code does is create rapid obsolescence. And it keeps "simple" programmers employed.
(Having perused the article a wee bit now, I agree with the points Sander makes, but not with the general principle of the thing. I prefer Einstein's "Everything Should Be Made as Simple as Possible, But Not Simpler"
Marc
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My signature Einstein's KISS variant.
Patrice
“Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler.” Albert Einstein
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A better rule: Code Smart!
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Brian Kernighan wrote: Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it.
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Fin feels like a person — actually, it feels like a multiplicity of people It didn't say if "her" is going to support .NET 
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"so much depends upon a red wheel barrow glazed with rain water beside the white chickens." 
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