Might also be that Jane Street is to OCaml what WhatsApp was to Erlang. Many ascribed the success of the small team at WhatsApp to their tech-stack, Erlang and FreeBSD. The reality probably was that they had hired really smart people, and those people choose to use Erlang (because eJabberd), but they could have been just as successful using another language.
Yes, Jane Street uses OCaml, they have no reason to stop using OCaml, but may very well have been just as successful using another language. It's hard to tell, when we don't know the full circumstances of why they went with OCaml initially.
> but they could have been just as successful using another language.
I remember reading about one founder that picked an obscure language because in doing so, it self-selected for more curious engineers who worked in the languages for fun rather than any other practical (re:job) reasons.
His thesis is that finding one really good engineer in said language was 1 in 10 (10 interviews to find 1 really good engineer) whereas in more commonly used languages like Java, JavaScript, etc., it might be 1 in 100
If we had picked Python, it’s very boring and reliable, and the same could be said of Java. But you’re picking the lowest common denominator. I would say high performers, and the best programmers are often people that will only work in niche languages.
The problem is, there are good Java programmers, but there are also thousands of terrible Java programmers. If you pick the right niche, it’s easier to find the high-end talent. I think Paul Graham also made a very strong case that in a startup, you should be using the most powerful language you can, and that is Clojure.
I interviewed with one YC startup that was using ReScript and ReasonML on the same principle (I asked the founder why he chose Reason).
Talented people are valuable in general which gives them bargaining power so they can demand to use their preferred tech regardless of whether that tech is niche or not.
I generally agree with the notion that talented folks are more likely to explore niche tech. Just be careful making the leap from "they prefer niche X" to "therefore they are talented".
Two anecdotes:
1. I'm an average programmer who likes niche tech.
2. My friend is 10x more talented than me, but he likes mainstream tech.
> Just be careful making the leap from "they prefer niche X" to "therefore they are talented".
Not my approach, to be sure :)
I think I have a pretty good heuristic for finding curious and inquisitive people that doesn't rely on esoteric tech stacks.
My sense is that a lot of engineering teams have lost their way so the only mechanism they can use now are convoluted leetcode style interviews instead to filter out Senior Java Dev Candidate 43 versus Senior Java Dev Candidate 96.
tons of successful companies (facebook) were founded on apps written in php (thought to be one of the lowest common denominator of the language world at one time).
Facebook, even early on, wasn't really what I would consider very technical in both engineering and domain complexity.
When FB started to grow, it needed the HipHop VM[0] to make it scalable beyond PHP. I'd agree that PHP is a lowest common denominator and FB eventually needed to move beyond it to get to the next level.
I dunno man, they managed to mostly stay up during times of extreme growth, and were able to scale their graph stuff (people you may know etc) in a way that competing companies (i.e. Friendster) couldn't.
The domain probably isn't that complicated, but the infrastructure certainly was (and this was all pre-cloud so they built it themselves).
But yeah, FB's success came from a base level of keeping the site up and incredibly good tactics to drive growth and distribution.
> but they could have been just as successful using another language.
I don't claim to be a rockstar developer or anything close. But my capabilities and efficiency as a developer are tightly coupled to the tech stack I use (not just language).
I moved from a job where I chose my own tech stack that I iterated over several years to one where I'm forced to use (IMHO) tools that are poorly suited to my work, and I'd say the quality and volume of my work has dropped by at least 10x.
So I think it's both. You need smart people, but they also need to be using the right tools for the job.
It's very hard to determine if they succeeded because of or despite of in any quantified way. WhatsApp, Viaweb, Jane Street, NoRedInk are examples of where they succeeded with a smaller language and none of them afaik blamed the language but praised it.
However, I think if you are a company doing something boring and that can only pay average, then having an interesting tech stack (including a nice language), hiring globally and having good benefits might give you a venue to compete for talent. You'll need some kind of strategy.
Yes, Jane Street uses OCaml, they have no reason to stop using OCaml, but may very well have been just as successful using another language. It's hard to tell, when we don't know the full circumstances of why they went with OCaml initially.