"a manager telling me what tools to use to do my job is a bad manager by definition because he should realize that the people who best know what tools to use are the peope who use the tools*."
I'm sorry, this doesn't make much sense to me. In an ideal world where all developers are all knowing and know every language inside and out, then allowing each developer to choose his tools(languages) would work. You don't see a problem with programmer Joe using Perl, Brad using Python, Carl uses Smalltalk, Nate uses Java, Steve using Ruby, and Ed using Haskell? "* Did you know that most good chef cooks have their own knive set? And what do you think is the reason a restaurant manager don't tell them to use the company in-house Amefa blades instead of his global knives? " This is a very poor analogy. The next chef doesn't have to re-cook what the previous chef has done(well, that didn't work either)...er...This has nothing to do with programming. The manager may have his reasons for choosing the tools. Perhaps nearly all projects that have been developed and are in development are using paticular tools. It's easy for team members to work on any project.(I'm speaking more of languages and frameworks not down to the editors and IDEs.) It would be nice if the team could decide on tools, and sometimes that's appropriate. Maybe they want to migrate to a new language or framework. Maybe there's a throw away project that could be a test for the new language or framework. If you want to try a new/different language, you need to show the benefit other than "it's cool/new". -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
