
Ask HN: Which programming language is the right one for your startup? - chrisherd
If you were starting up and had to acquire the requisite technical skills to enable the implementation of your idea, how would you choose the right language which will enable you to realise your ambitions?
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mindcrime
Like @jetti, I would (and have) gone with what I already know. In my case,
Groovy and Java. There are other languages I'm intrigued by, but I haven't
seen enough evidence to convince me that any new language is going to offer
such radical improvement in (performance|productivity|stability|whatever) as
to justify the huge time sink it would be to switch.

That said, we try to make things API driven as much as possible (I'm loath to
use the term "microservices", but I guess it would fit) so we have the option
to introduce new languages on a piecemeal basis if/when it seems justified.

Some languages I've played with / looked at (or used in the past) that might
make it into the mix someday include C++, Scala, Clojure, R, Python, Prolog
and Julia... possibly others as well. But we're not going to start throwing
new stuff in just because it's new and trendy. We try to avoid FDD (Fad Driven
Development).

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jetti
I would (and have) picked the language I already had a deep knowledge of: C#.
Other than that, I would pick something that seemed to fit the need of what
I'm doing. I'm thinking of creating a licensing as a service product which I
would use Elixir/Phoenix because I've heard good things about the performance
and I could have many calls coming in.

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vorg
Unlike @jetti and @mindcrime, I would use the opportunity of a green fields
project to switch to and learn a more suitable industry-accepted language such
as Python instead of a declining language that I happen to know better like
the ageing Apache Groovy, which was originally optimized for scripting but
badly retrofitted with static typing and for building systems, which other
languages built from the ground up for such stuff are markedly better at, such
as Java, Scala, and Kotlin on the JVM at least.

~~~
dmux
I've been using Groovy for about a year now. Can you explain what you mean
about the static system being "badly retrofitted?"

