There's still a defense of languages here, and I'm not sure it's due. You chalk up the efficacy of V8 as a delivery mechanism to it carrying portable knowledge in (already knowing JS) and it's usefulness as a general tool.

There is a possibility that this viewpoint doesn't leave any room for: the possibility that languages make nearly no difference. Perhaps people are savvy, and interested in more complex things, but the various languages and platforms don't bring any concrete value. Instead of being a function of how widely-ranging people's interests are, it's instead a question of whether anyone is actually making real tracks away from a center, a center whose nebulous nature is only permitting the forging of false distinctions in.

Rather than marking time by languages, perhaps it's more interesting to mark what we focused our language use on?