It actually seems like it ought to be easier to find a good programmer when you're hiring for one of the more obscure languages like F#, OCaml, Erlang, Clojure,

It actually seems like it ought to be easier to find a good programmer when you're hiring for one of the more obscure languages like F#, OCaml, Erlang, Clojure, etc. The total number of available programmers may be less, but most of them are probably going to at least be decent (they were self-motivated to learn a non-mainstream language, after all). If you're trying to find a great Java developer (in which case what you're really looking for a great developer who is willing to code in Java for money), you're going to waste a lot more time sifting through legions of incompetent code monkeys to find somebody good (one good screening filter: if Java is the only programming language they know -> reject).