To be most effective for a given type of work a language has to be designed for that work. It's a question of having the right tool for the job. We needed a simple, easy to learn, powerful language that was dynamic, like Lisp or Smalltalk, but had a familiar syntax like C++ or Java. We also needed tight integration with the database, and the right facilities to build application frameworks. And we needed features like garbage collection and exception handling. We also wanted something that was easy to deploy, without a lot of dependencies.