In our school, everyone knew that Java is for lesser programmers before they ever wrote a line of it. I actually thought that too and being ambitious, I would go for different course.
Then I matured (both as person and as programmer) and now I don't hold the same views.
I don't want to say that "java is for lesser programmers". What I want to say is developers and companies sort themselves by making individual choices.
The end effect being that if you work for a company and you don't have a huge hiring budget you don't go looking for developers in esoteric languages.
Because then availability of developer is much more important than showing they can pass steep learning curve.
On the other hand developers who can't pass steep learning curve will gravitate to a language without one, where they can be hired more easily.
Does steepness of learning curve mean a language is better or worse? Not necessarily.
Does a person getting into Java development mean the person is bad developer? Of course not.
> The end effect being that if you work for a company and you don't have a huge hiring budget you don't go looking for developers in esoteric languages.
The salaries breakdowns I have seen did not worked like this at all. Esoteric languages paid less. I think it was mostly because those companies were in unstable businesses and because people who like those languages accept pay cuts more often. The salaries for boring languages were higher.
And second, the assumption that only difficult thing that can possibly attract people is difficult/esoteric language is odd. If you are in that situation, then you are in fundamentally easy situation. In fact, forums are full of developers for whom frameworks used in jave world are impenetrably complicated to learn. I can't square that with supposed superior willingness to learn. (I can easily square not liking these.)
> The salaries breakdowns I have seen did not worked like this at all. Esoteric languages paid less.
That's because salary is only one part of the cost. You are looking as if it was the only cost, which is not true.
Finding people for the project costs. Finding people with exotic abilities costs a lot and takes a lot of time which may complicate your plans or require you to have extra staff just in case somebody leaves.
It may pay less because in some specific niches people will work for less just to be able to do what they like to do. If I had ability to join a serious Common Lisp project I might do the same.
Then I matured (both as person and as programmer) and now I don't hold the same views.