man, I agree with your recommendation, but strongly disagree with your reasoning. Cheap devs don't pay off. Seriously, I have hired a lot of developers and on

man, I agree with your recommendation, but strongly disagree with your reasoning. Cheap devs don't pay off. Seriously, I have hired a lot of developers and one good dev (at twice the rate of a cheap one) can easily do 10 times the work, while minimizing technical debt. If you're doing a prototype with the full intention of throwing it away, that's one thing but please don't go cheap. Get less devs and pay them more. As for languages, a startup wants to be cheap. Most of them are doing web stuff. Unless you have a specific need, go ruby or python. People who are interested in either generally are passing on php / javascript for a reason i.e. they're not good languages. Maybe pick go if you want to do systems stuff or performance is critical. The reasons NOT to pick C# are 1) cost 2) lockin 3) flexibility