What attracts people to being a programmer? For some people it’s “looks like a reasonable job with good pay and conditions”. For others, it’s more “I love computers, programming, and abstract puzzles to solve”. This latter group (of which I am one), is more likely to provide both benefits and problems.
The benefit is they will generally be capable of greater innovation than the former group, but the downside is that they may just focus on interesting puzzles and ignore the needs of the (boring) business. Choosing an exotic language will greatly tilt the ratios towards this later group.
Most people in this later group can discipline themselves to focus on delivery, while remaining a great resource when truely challenging puzzles pop up. Most, but not all. Choosing a very esoteric language is pushing the curve far towards this tail, and the result will be many “brilliant, but useless to our business, people”.
Every small business needs a strong technical leader. I’m convinced of this. You need someone in charge that can stop the arguments, make people put down their toys, and remove people that cannot contribute for whatever reason. So this is my conclusion, it’s boring like so much of business. You need the right manager.