"Spending another 5 years in Java means you're preparing yourself for a 1996 job in 2016." In the type of environments where I work, five years experience ship

"Spending another 5 years in Java means you're preparing yourself for a 1996 job in 2016." In the type of environments where I work, five years experience shipping successful software will advance your career further than five years experience in one particular language. If you choose a bleeding edge language, what is the risk you will spend time solving edge cases with the language instead of delivering great software? Given everyone's lack of experience in a language, what is the risk you will write something unmaintainable? If your bleeding edge runtime is slower, what is the risk that it will fall apart under load? It's possible these are acceptable risks for the gains in programmer productivity. That risk to gain ratio would have to be massive to persuade me. Yes, picking bleeding edge technology will filter out bozos during hiring. You'll also filter out engineers who are more passionate about shipping than new technology. You're left with an high concentration of engineers who have never seen bleeding edge technology blow up in their face.