> Deep down, the people in charge either didn’t think languages make any difference or, worse, bought into the silly “availability of programmers” argument. I’m still surprised anyone would believe such a thing. If i guy came telling me that he wanted to program only in, say, Java because that’s what he knows best and that he doesn’t really feel prepared or interested in learning and using, say, Clojure (or any other language, really), i wouldn’t hire him in a million years, no matter what language my project were using, and no matter how many thousands of candidates like this one i had at my disposal.

The problem is not willingness to learn, the problem is the risk of going into a job, becoming less fluent in a language for which there are more job opportunities, and then being able to get paid as much or more with the new skills they learned.

I am very interested in learning Clojure, Scheme, Lisp. But, these languages do not provide job security unless I want to move. Companies want .Net (C# or VB), Java, and JavaScript- w/ other various associated frameworks and libraries. So I have little incentive to opt to use Lisp at work, even if given the opportunity.

I was a long time Java developer, but have been using Ruby for the past several years. It is really not as easy to find Ruby jobs locally as it is in Java or .Net, but I think it will be worth it because the # of Ruby jobs is growing. I don't see that for Clojure, though I really do wish it well. For a language to gain in the job market have, it doesn't need to be the best, it has to be fun, easy, and safe enough to use for the ecosystem to grow around it.

C++ was more fun than Fortran/Cobol.

Java was more fun than C++/.Net was more fun than Visual C++.

Groovy, JavaScript, Python and Ruby are more fun than Java.

PhP was more fun than HTML + CGI. Ruby/Rails is more fun than PhP.

Note: when I say "fun" I don't mean it in the "challenging" sense of fun like Haskell. I mean writing great, cool things quickly and understanding it easily.