Reframing Debates About Programming Languages

I recently had to go through choosing a programming language for a project at work, so this piece from Steve Francia on Why Engineers Can't Be Rational About Programming Languages resonated:

In every language discussion, two conversations are happening simultaneously.

We all know this intuitively if not explicitly. There's the technical discussion and then there's whatever else is going on underneath. Francia explains why that second, "invisible conversation," as he calls it is happening.

They’re not just analyzing technical trade offs, they’re contemplating a version of themselves that doesn’t exist yet, that feels threatening to the version that does.

Go read the whole thing. It's well written and researched. There are some great practical tips here for how to reframe the discussion from the purely technical debate it's pretending to be.