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Wow, an entire article about the costs of choosing an obscure language—which are real enough—but nothing about the benefits. I think everybody here understands
by ekidd 16y ago
Wow, an entire article about the costs of choosing an obscure language—which are real enough—but nothing about the benefits. I think everybody here understands that Java and C# are popular, and that this means you'll have an easier time finding libraries and warm bodies.
Here are some other questions the recruiter should have asked:
1. Can you develop your application less time using Closure or Scala than Java? How much less time? Can you iterate faster and try out more ideas before you run out of money?
2. How easy it to recruit good programmers who know Java? In my experience, less than 5% of people who apply for programming jobs know how to reverse a singly-linked list. In a startup, you care about the ease of recruiting 10x programmers, not the ease of recruiting warm bodies.
In short, the article explores half the problem. Without exploring the other half, there's no way to decide which companies should follow this advice, and which should contemptuously ignore it.
- alnayyir 16y agoManager-types are more risk-averse than they are opportunity seeking. Grokking that goes a long way towards understanding this kind of blind decision making.
- ekidd 16y agoManager-types are more risk-averse than they are opportunity seeking. But is this an appropriate strategy for a startup? As Paul Graham points out, the average startup fails, so you don't want merely average performance. If you're not prepared to manage risky tradeoffs, you may not be prepared to manage a startup.
- alnayyir 16y ago>But is this an appropriate strategy for a startup? No. A startup should just use whatever the tech co-founder is going to work fastest in. Hiring strategies shouldn't even be a consideration for a startup.