Using Clojure and Elixir and LLMs are fantastic with both. Sure, if I get to a super-stable situation then maybe I'd consider moving to Rust (or Jank?), but for now I'm just so happy with Clojure and Elixir in this new world. I'm solving new problems with fully bespoke architecture so the flexibility is key. Clojure for business logic and most DB. With Elixir, it's the actor model and hand-holding as I'm using it for the web layer. I bet Ruby on Rails would also shine for some cases, prob most CRUD for example.

What made you use Clojure for business logic and DBs rather than using Elixir for everything? The JVM ecosystem?

> fantastic with both

Most developers evaluate programming languages by comparing features in isolation, never stepping back to consider the overall experience of using one.

Features are easy to talk about. They're discrete, nameable, and comparable. "Does it have Foo?" is a question you can actually answer. "What's it like to build and maintain a real system in language X for two or three years?" isn't. So people default to what's measurable.

Most devs haven't spent serious time in more than two or three languages in production. Without that contrast, the holistic experience is invisible - you don't know what you're missing, and you don't notice the pain you've learned to live with.

Language communities form around features because features make good rallying points. "We have algebraic types." "We have macros." These become identity markers. The holistic experience doesn't tribalize as cleanly - it's harder to put on a t-shirt.

There's also a sunk-cost angle: devs who've spent years in a language have every incentive to believe its features justify the investment. Honestly evaluating the overall experience might undermine that.

The irony is that the languages with the most devoted communities tend to be loved for exactly these holistic reasons - the ones that are nearly impossible to convey through a feature list. You can rave about Clojure or Elixir all day, but a curious newcomer will land on the homepage, scan the features, and walk away unimpressed: "Meh, it doesn't even have Foo. People say this is great? They clearly don't know what they're talking about."