Taking the "old" argument I recall a director of mine refusing to use Java because (at the time) it had only been around for three years so hadn't had long enough to become stable.

I wonder, sometimes, what makes a language old. In my thinking, a language is old when it no longer allows you to do what you need to do to get paid. Or it does but in a very odd and costly manner.

The fact that Perl has been around for a while doesn't make it old. It just makes it tried and tested. The same is true, then, for C, C++ (yada yada yada). Note - I didn't say bug free ;)

Again, a personal view, but I tend to think people consider things as old because they aren't in the buzz hilights of the moment. Or in the top ten magazine headlines of your chosen field.

A good example is a co-worker of days gone by who immediately declared that now we had .NET we no longer needed C++ and could ditch it. C++ (in his eyes) was old.

Frankly though, I dont' really care. You don't want to program in one of the languages I get paid for . . . all the more paid opportunities for me.