[aliswe]

> ... and the question regarding choosing Clojure as our main programming language rose over and over again

If I find myself having to repeat myself justifying a certain decision time and time again, it's an indicator that the decision needs to be revised to be something which is a more intuitive fit for the organization.

[lostcolony]

Not really; it's like stoplights. You're going to be interrupted and therefore notice the red lights, and just sail easily through and thus not notice the green lights. Likewise, you're going to notice the pain points, but need to take a minute to reflect to notice the benefits.

Really, if repeating the same justifications convinces people, then the problem isn't the justifications.

[joelbluminator]

I donno why you're being downvoted, it's a questionable decision and probably the company would have been better off with Python/PHP/Node. Hiring and onboarding are extremely important for a startup. You know what else? Finding answers to common questions on Google/Stackoverflow; I am now working with Ember and can tell you guys you take a 50% productivity hit by using a tool that's obscure on Google. Sure once you become super familiar with a tool that matters less, but that takes time. Much more time. React/Angular may be an inferior tool to Ember but the fact that you can get answers to almost any question is priceless. The community size is super important. The frameworks are super important (is there a Closure equivalent to Rails/Django/Laravel in community size, in battle testedness? I really doubt it).

That being said, I salute these brave companies for sticking to these obscure languages. Do we want to live in a world where there's only 3 languages to do everything? Even 10 sounds boring. Hell, even a fantastic tool like Ruby is considered Niche in certain parts of the world. I don't want a world without Ruby so I don't want a world without Closure.

[iLemming]

> Hiring and onboarding are extremely important for a startup.

If you're a small company, you usually cannot afford to hire "mediocre" talent. It is much more expensive to undo the crapola they'd implement. Trying to hire those who are at least interested in learning and using languages like Clojure, Rust, Haskell, Elixir, Elm, etc., is a very good quality filter. ROI from hiring a smaller number of Clojure devs, rather than a few more "regular" engineers - is much higher.

> Finding answers to common questions on Google/Stackoverflow;

Clojure gives you far fewer reasons for Googling things than other language ecosystems. It is dense language and inspires you to write smaller functions, decreasing the surface area for the problem. Most of the time, asking questions in Clojurians Slack sends you halfway through the solution.

> I salute these brave companies for sticking to these obscure languages

They do not choose Clojure for the shtick; Clojure is a highly pragmatic and immensely productive instrument. There are many "success stories" with small and medium-sized companies. A few large companies like Cisco, Apple, Walmart, et al., actively develop in Clojure.

The same can be said about the engineers. They don't choose Clojure because "they hate Java". You can check any Clojure surveys of the past. Most Clojure engineers are experienced and "tired" developers. Seasoned hackers who have seen the action. For most of them - Clojure is a deliberate choice. Many of them landed in it after trying various other alternatives.

[joelbluminator]

> Trying to hire those who are at least interested in learning and using languages like Clojure, Rust, Haskell, Elixir, Elm, etc., is a very good quality filter.

That's not my experience. It doesn't say a whole lot, it just says a person is bored a bit and is confident in his ability to learn new things, you can filter for learning abilities by looking at what the person achieved; doing new stacks is just one metric. Also it's sometimes the type of people who care more about learning/trying new tech on the job than actually helping the business (for exmaple by introducing GraphQL because they read about it in a blog and it looks cool, not because they really think the business needs it).

[aliswe]

> I donno why you're being downvoted

Oh that's easy - the voting system is a way to know how conformant you are to other opinions coffee smile

[yakshaving_jgt]

Alternatively, you could document the thought process that lead up to the decision and you can point the unenlightened to the documentation instead of having to repeat yourself.

[outworlder]

That's not a good indication that the decision was or was not correct. Only that it currently runs against whatever the established practice is. Sometimes "the way things have always been done" is just wrong.

This is unlikely to be the case in the choice of programming languages. Some may be a bad fit, some may have ecosystems that are unpleasant to use, but it's generally not the biggest problem an organization will have.