I'm pretty sure one of the reasons Paul Graham and Robert Morris started their own company was because they didn't want to take a job writing software for Windows.
I also believe the guys who started ITA software wanted a problem domain where they could justify using Lisp.
So there are a few precedents for finding an excuse to use more expressive languages to solve challenging problems, in a way that makes money.
Something I've come to understand as an expat is why so many expats and immigrants wind up starting their own businesses rather than seeking local employment; it's not necessarily fun to work through bureaucracy with a language barrier involved, but at least your day to day job is in the language you know and you can get on with it.
Perhaps there's something to that in programming languages as well; I sometimes wonder if the reason for the explosion in startups and web applications is that for as much as I hate fighting with CSS and HTML templates, at least it's better than trying to make sense of the Windows API. And if you've grown up, as many young startup coders do, with the world of JavaScript and the web, it's what you know as much as Lisp was what guys like Paul Graham knew.
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I'm pretty sure one of the reasons Paul Graham and Robert Morris started their own company was because they didn't want to take a job writing software for Windows.
I also believe the guys who started ITA software wanted a problem domain where they could justify using Lisp.
So there are a few precedents for finding an excuse to use more expressive languages to solve challenging problems, in a way that makes money.
Something I've come to understand as an expat is why so many expats and immigrants wind up starting their own businesses rather than seeking local employment; it's not necessarily fun to work through bureaucracy with a language barrier involved, but at least your day to day job is in the language you know and you can get on with it.
Perhaps there's something to that in programming languages as well; I sometimes wonder if the reason for the explosion in startups and web applications is that for as much as I hate fighting with CSS and HTML templates, at least it's better than trying to make sense of the Windows API. And if you've grown up, as many young startup coders do, with the world of JavaScript and the web, it's what you know as much as Lisp was what guys like Paul Graham knew.