Having Done Perl

In Having Done Java, Tim Bray asserts:

I’ve observed that, on average, the quality of the libraries is better in Java than in the competition: Perl, Python, Ruby, whatever. […] This suggests a hypothesis: Having been a Java programmer will make you a better Ruby or Python or whatever programmer. Ooh, are people ever gonna get mad at me.

And my first instinct was to reach for my editor and write a rebuttal, saying such things as CPAN having spoiled me for other languages’ libraries, and Perl having made me a better programmer in other languages in and of itself without this being dependent on its libraries, and that you can’t say this of Java since there are many people who know nothing else and will write Java in every language, and so knowing Java alone does not make you a better anything, and then wondering if the real factor in being a better programmer is not so much knowing any particular language than simply knowing multiple dissimilar ones (after all I know more languages than Perl and so does he know more languages than Java)…

But I think I’ll just sit here chuckling to myself. He knows what he just said, after all.