Not all uncommon languages are made equal. It's very different to hire someone to work on Scala than it is to hire someone to work in PICK.
I believe than when push comes to shove, the language your team uses is not the primary determination of the quality of your software. I've actually seen good programs in PICK, an ancient abomination that nobody should be using today. Your major difference is people. Good developers with a good direction will give you good software. Bad developers with the same toolset will give you bad software. So, if anything, your language selection is important because it gives you a very different talent pool.
Hiring a Scala developer, for instance, isn't all that easy, but it's definitely not impossible. For the extra pain you pay in finding someone that will use Scala instead of Java, you get, in exchange, a major filter on your applicants, which tends to be a good thing.
With an antique like PICK, the filter works against you, because what you get is the very old that have not moved on, and the desperate.
I do not think that getting more and more exclusive gets you a better filter, even when you are looking for relatively hip, uncommon languages. Is your Clojure developer naturally better than your Scala developer? How about Haskell? It's not really an issue of every filtering picking the best, but picking people that care about their tools.
So if someone told me that they are hiring developers, and that they completely lack a network to pull them from, it'll be easier to get a good core of developers in one of those uncommon languages than if you just place an ad for people that have 10 years of Java experience. This situation is uncommon though: If you are hiring, you typically have a network. Then what you do is to target some of the best developers you can get a hold of, and hire around the technologies they want to use. You'd be surprised by how much money a competitor has to pay a developer to poach them out of you if they really like your current toolset, but aren't really all that fond of the one the competitor uses.
We decided on Scala because our seed team wanted to use it, and just went out and hired locals that had similar technology interest. We also brought in a few major independent consultants that made sure our core team really understood the language, instead of just staring with good developers with little experience in their toolset. Overall, our experience was very positive, and we have a happy Scala crew.
I believe than when push comes to shove, the language your team uses is not the primary determination of the quality of your software. I've actually seen good programs in PICK, an ancient abomination that nobody should be using today. Your major difference is people. Good developers with a good direction will give you good software. Bad developers with the same toolset will give you bad software. So, if anything, your language selection is important because it gives you a very different talent pool.
Hiring a Scala developer, for instance, isn't all that easy, but it's definitely not impossible. For the extra pain you pay in finding someone that will use Scala instead of Java, you get, in exchange, a major filter on your applicants, which tends to be a good thing.
With an antique like PICK, the filter works against you, because what you get is the very old that have not moved on, and the desperate.
I do not think that getting more and more exclusive gets you a better filter, even when you are looking for relatively hip, uncommon languages. Is your Clojure developer naturally better than your Scala developer? How about Haskell? It's not really an issue of every filtering picking the best, but picking people that care about their tools.
So if someone told me that they are hiring developers, and that they completely lack a network to pull them from, it'll be easier to get a good core of developers in one of those uncommon languages than if you just place an ad for people that have 10 years of Java experience. This situation is uncommon though: If you are hiring, you typically have a network. Then what you do is to target some of the best developers you can get a hold of, and hire around the technologies they want to use. You'd be surprised by how much money a competitor has to pay a developer to poach them out of you if they really like your current toolset, but aren't really all that fond of the one the competitor uses.
We decided on Scala because our seed team wanted to use it, and just went out and hired locals that had similar technology interest. We also brought in a few major independent consultants that made sure our core team really understood the language, instead of just staring with good developers with little experience in their toolset. Overall, our experience was very positive, and we have a happy Scala crew.
Of course, YMMV.