The thing this (very good) post doesn't mention is that big companies select for blub languages because that's where the most low-cost labor is, in that you can hire multiple Java developers for the cost of one Haskell developer, even if Haskell might be objectively a better choice for the project.
I don't think this is a charitable interpretation. As a business, you need to be able to backfill positions or hire more when the need arises. If you use a language that's very commonly used, it's a lot easier to hire. There isn't anything sinister to that, it's simply reasonable.
There was a post, I think on the Uber engineering blog, that stuck with me. It essentially boiled down to: it's easier to change the tech stack than the hiring pool, and talked about deliberately setting something up that was technically less optimal but easier to hire for
Corollary: it's perhaps easier to throw money at fancier hardware to improve performance, than the alternatives
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I did not expect to see big-company apologia on Hacker News.
In the comments I see little apologia. The article rather brings up some points which are contrarian to the common view on HN, and the people on HN discuss whether these points have some truth in them, or the author missed some important considerations, or whether the author is wrong.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apologia
The thing this (very good) post doesn't mention is that big companies select for blub languages because that's where the most low-cost labor is, in that you can hire multiple Java developers for the cost of one Haskell developer, even if Haskell might be objectively a better choice for the project.