In the past, one language was deemed more powerful than another language in terms of what application its syntax and semantics best lent itself to: COBOL, a business oriented language, FORTRAN, a scientific language.
IBM developed its mainframe software in a PL/1-like language PLSIII (later PLAS, later PLX), which had nice pointer capabilites used for parsing tokens, i.e., commands.
It wasn't until COBOL II that a field could be looked at as an array, a syntax called reference modification. C has always looked at character strings as arrays. Assembler has operations that allow for the manipulation of fields at the bit level. In short, each language contains capabilities that may or may not be of use in terms of the application being developed.
Today, I think, the "power" of a language is determined by its ability to embody object-oriented concepts such as encapsulation, abstraction, polymorphisim, and inheritance.
Furthermore,a languages such as JAVA, while supporting object-orientation, also provide mechanisms for supporting communications between hetero- or homogeneous distributed envrionments, most commonly an n-tier architecture, most notably a web tier.
The promised payoff is more portable, more quickly developed, more reusable, and more scalable applications. Aside from working storage and procedural copybooks and called modules, resusability in the COBOL world involves the COPY command.
If you find that the capabilities of an object-oriented language are essential in meeting the goals of your shop, then consider migrating.
