Nobody who can spell HTML would be surprised if you launched a Web 2.0 company and chose to use Rails to build your site. On the other hand, one of the ways startups beat the competition is by taking the road less travelled, by using a language considered wierd or niche by everyone else. Success can lead to the language being noticed and becoming more widely accepted.

I was pleased to discover that Slideaware have migrated from Rails to Erlang for their online powerpoint collaboration application. Not because I don’t like Rails, but because I really like Erlang.