I’ve gone back and forth about my language choices over the years. Some of those changes have been based on inexperience (Python is really easy to learn), some on curiosity (Clojure is so different! What are LISPs all about?!). Others have been based in a kind of misplaced egoism, followed by a quick return to reality: “Surely I am smart enough to use Haskell!” (reads about monads and is still mostly confused).

There was nothing wrong with any of these choices. They all happened at points in my development that made sense. What I’m learning now, is that there is a lot of wisdom in returning to your roots. I found it odd that MIT stopped using SICP, but their rationale was fair: we moved from programming-by-composition to programming-by-poking. All the same, I still think there is value there.

SICP gives beginners two differing ways of considering the field of computing. Using Scheme, you consider computing from the perspective of data and transformations. These abstractions allow you to move quickly, to build and compose small pieces, and create large pieces of well-understood, yet robust software. Using C, you consider the computer as it works in physical terms. How memory works, how the CPU executes instructions, etc. (IMO, this should be reinforced more than it is in contemporary computer science).

Both C and Scheme, by design, are simple languages. This was a conscious choice by the writers of SICP. I’m beginning to favor these choices in my own life as well. The beauty of simple languages is that they are easy to understand.

At my previous job, I ended up using Clojure and ClojureScript for a large application. We had used NodeJS and JavaScript in our initial version, but found ourselves running into a lot of issues with JavaScript itself, that Clojure seemed to alleviate. We had a great time from there, producing features at a much faster rate than we did with JS, and it was more performant as far as we could tell. It wasn’t all positive though.

Our employer was a small research lab, and in giving us carte blanche to pick our stack, they essentially doomed the project at the same time. Funding issues arose, and I left the project. My former coworker, who I still keep in touch with, is also looking to leave for similar reasons. When he does, the project will likely die.

This isn’t because the concepts of the project are hard to grasp. Nor is Clojure a particularly hard language to learn. The problem is a subtle one. Clojure mostly represents a hurdle because it is a LISP. Many programmers are thrown off by the parentheses or something. Which is unfortunate because LISP semantics are really simple.

Python is an interesting case here. Some developers have an issue with whitespace sensitivity, but aside from that, it is a generally well-favored language. More interestingly, it has had significant uptake by the greater scientific community. As a result, there are a tremendous number of mature libraries for doing pretty much anything, from interactive graphing to computer vision.

It’s also incredibly easy to find developers that know Python, even if they don’t have a traditional computer science background. This (in my experience) is usually not a problem, though developers without a CS background may require more oversight to adhere to code standards, complexity analysis, etc.

The main point is that by choosing a simple, popular system, you gain strength in numbers. The problems you run into will hardly be unique, and this alone is generally worth the tradeoffs in expressiveness or performance.