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Comment by phasevar | Hacker News Reader

Excellent success story with Go.

Love this quote... "We also weren't sure if we would be able hire top talent if we chose Go, but we soon found out that we could get top talent because we chose Go."

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That's really obvious but overlooked. Developers just looking for their paycheck will only have learnt the established languages.

Developers who enjoy their profession will look to the future, excitement gleaming in their eyes.

I've heard of business developing in Haskell a good amount of success. I suspect, for the same reason.

It could also be said that developers who use established languages are excited to get things done rather than reinvent wheels continuously.

No, it can't. People don't use only Java because they "just want to get things done." They use only Java because that's all they learned, and all they need for their day job. If not, then they will invariably step over languages that are very interesting but obscure.

I'll give an anecdote. I've spent the last 7 years using Ada, a language that is /both/ interesting and obscure, almost exclusively. It's really a fantastic language that is frequently neglected much like poor Go, but with more merit. Anyway, in preparing the launch of my company's first iteration of its podcast network (http://76streetnetwork.com), I absolutely wanted to use Ada, but the allure of the utterly fantastic tool support and breadth of libraries available for Java had me up and running in a day or two despite having never written anymore than basic hello world-like crap with it in the past. There's really nothing crazy about Java, you're right, but I live for coding and I have a deep interest in quality software development, but I guess I'm just looking for a paycheck for this side project that will never make me any money! Ironically, Ada is what pays my bills.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying you shouldn't use Java--just that "I've only ever used Java" is a pretty good indicator of somebody not being genuinely interested in software development, and different ways to do things. I'd take somebody who learned Ada for fun over somebody who learned Java in school (and did nothing else) for a Java job any day.

the lisp community used to hold this as a truism - there are some languages so good (powerful, satisfying and pleasurable to work with) that they become a compelling reason to take a job regardless of the nature of the actual product.

Yaron Minsky of Jane Street said pretty much the same thing about OCaml in one of his talks. And it makes sense. Go and OCaml are not mainstream, so the people who know these languages are likely interested in improving their own skillset, and it makes sense that they would be above average programmers. If they like the language enough, they would of course want to work with it rather than other languages.

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