There's also another concern in the choice of languages, especially when it comes to VB and C#, and that's the case of familiarity. I know a few people who are multi-lingual (that is, in spoken language) and who tell me of how easy it is to pick up certain languages compared to others, not because they're easy but because the concepts and structures are similar to that of a language they're already fluent in. If I were to give my own opinion I'd say that if there's any language that is unfamiliar to a family of languages it would be VB for its peculiar conventions syntactically compared to most other languages. Ask a Java developer to shift over to C# and they'll say "That's simple, I'm already familiar with this flavour of syntax." So is there meaning in choosing between the languages? Yes, if familiarity leads to higher productivity then there is method in the madness, and it's tangibly rewarding.

I agree completely, and this has manifested itself many-a-time when I'm posting a question on SO. Eventually my mind solves the problem and SO never hears of my issues. I also read 59 seconds recently and was very impressed by it, primarily because it's straight-to-the-point, although writing the problem seemed to be one of the primary things I got from it.