As far as your discussion with your co-worker about commercial programs written in scripting languages, I think you need to clarify what you mean by "scripting language". What is a "script" as opposed to an application? What is a scripting language? When you say script, I think of short shell scripts, windows .bat files, or short perl utilities that I've written. While these languages are all great for writing quick scripts, perl differs in that it is just as well suited for writing large and complex programs.

When you view perl as a full featured programming language and compare it to C or C++, it's clear that some things are easier to do in perl. The web based programs I mentioned do a lot of text processing, which is easier in perl where you don't have to worry about memory allocation, typing, or other low level details as much. That leads to quicker development and easier maintenance, which are important factors for a commercial product.

I think visual basic is a good counter-example to your coworker's rule. Many commercial apps are written in it. The mantra at Lucent/Bell may have worked well because many of their programs were lower-level, hardware-interfacing sorts of programs. Visual basic, perl, etc., make the user interface and some other programming tasks easy, and often rely on libraries and built-in functions for the lower level stuff.