I don't deny it as a general trend - but just curious as to why Mr. HotShot recruiter mentioned those three in the same article with startups in it. It's just interesting that quite an overwhelming amount of west coast startups tend to be ruby and/or python shops (in my recent memory, I've seen php mentioned in WePay and facebook; and Perl in Craigslist; Java seems to be mentioned in bigger tech shops or Android shops). If there is one "hot" skill today, I'd have picked JavaScript over all those three.