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Comment by winter_blue | Hacker News Reader

Seriously, not knowing the language shouldn't be a factor in choosing a language.

Just choose the best programming language, and everyone can learn it; and they'll be happy and grateful in the long run that they chose to learn this new language, rather than use whatever they were familiar with.

Moreover, Java is such a simple and an easy language to pick up. If the cruft is too much to deal with, go with Kotlin. An experienced developer could learn either language (Java or Kotlin) easily over a single weekend.

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This isn't always a useful way to look at it. For a startup or small team especially, any time spent learning a new programming language is time spent not working on the core product. Yes, you might be better off in the long run using a more foreign programming language, but then again the business might not survive that long if you aren't actually building anything.

Also, it's easy to learn a language's syntax over a weekend, but it generally takes a lot longer to start being productive and writing idiomatic code in a new language, especially if you're also learning a new platform. That's time that you or your team may not have.

As I said above: hire someone new or invest the time to learn the language. Just because someone knows how to make a cute scarf using duct tape, safety scissors, and Elmers glue doesn't mean they should be building your backend driving the company 95 mph with seatbelts, airbags, and a chassis with crumple-zones.

Hiring someone is very time consuming, and requires paying another salary, benefits, etc. Also learning a new language takes time, yes a person can learn the basics of a language in a day or two, but it will be a long time before they are equally proficient with that new language.

You said nothing that wasn't painfully obvious. My point is to build the backend right so you don't have to rewrite it again later. The time investment in the beginning will pay dividends as you scale (unless you are just mocking up or making an MVP)

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