I use lua for most scripting. A big reason for this is that the entire lua environment is in lua.exe. This allows for me to distribute scripts easily without having to include a C++ installer with them.
You don't think they'll put humans on Mars within this century? Really? That's not a conservative statement. A conservative statement is, yea we'll probably get to Mars this century, but maybe not in the next 20 years.
I'm intrigued by your comment that being forced to do a lot with a little is powerful. Do you have any arguments or evidence for that you could point me to?
It sounds like he doesn't think the level of abstraction offered is high enough. If you are using an FPGA as a general purpose device, and not for prototyping, then a higher level of abstraction would be helpful. Otherwise, if you are prototyping, you may want a lower level of abstraction that may offer a closer approximation to your end goal.