[bradleyland]

> Nobody's saying you can't build app X in PHP, but it's likely that your competitor using a better language will get there first.

This is far more subtle than you think it is. The "speed" at which a team develops has very little to do with the actual language. The amount of time spent writing with the language pales in comparison to the time spent considering how your application will function, how you will structure it, and what you will call everything.

You may find, however, that it is easier to find teams that think in the "right way" in some language communities versus others. IMO, the community of developers that fit this "right way" of thinking (for startups) is migratory, so the answer today might not be the answer tomorrow. You need a team that balances conceptual purity with the pragmatism of results-based decisions.

The speed at which one language can be written versus another only applies in an "all other things being equal" scenario, and these scenarios almost never exist. The big differences in "time to successful solution" will almost always be decisions that aren't related to the language you choose.

[cageface]

The "speed" at which a team develops has very little to do with the actual language.

This is strongly contrary to my experience and extensive reports online. You wouldn't hesitate to argue that PHP is probably at least an order of magnitude more efficient for building web apps than C, right?

So why is it so hard to imagine that a cleaner and more expressive language than PHP might be as much as 2x better than PHP?