baddspellar

Is there really an aversion to using Java in a lean startup, or is this just an example of Voluntary Response Bias?

That is, are you simply observing that startups who make a big deal about the language they're using are more likely to be using one of the "hot" languages than a stodgy old language like Java?

There's a good article on stats.org that examines the statistics and concludes that this whole thing, as with many public health stories, is overblown: http://stats.org/stories/2010/choking_hot_dog_feb23_10.html

The key finding: "it is reasonable to assume, based on this data, that the number of children who die from choking on hot dogs is somewhere between 1.5 and 5 per year in the United States. The risk is overwhelmingly to children aged three and under, based on the natural tendency of infants to put stuff in their mouths. While each death is a terrible tragedy, it is not clear that this is something that this amounts to a “significant and unacceptable choking hazard” to the public warranting recall procedures, product changes and more warnings than already exist. The problem with the American Academy of Pediatrics paper is that it uses percentages without the context of frequency, so that you end up comparing percentage fatalities for widely different time periods without any indication of the actual number of deaths."