Indeed, I’m suggesting an alternative explanation for the given observations based around the absence of a strong selection criteria bias. I’m of the strong opinion that F# is a great language and that people of different levels of skills can be productive in it. As opposed to a C++/lisp combo where only the most careful programmers get to keep both of their feet.

F# is a slice through the language design space that optimizes for developer productivity, other languages with different design choices are optimized and are indeed better for other things.

I think there is a benefit to learning learning ‘bad’ languages as they teach you about the different design trade offs that are available. A person with dynamic programming language experience would have known that the given JSON task was tractable without types and not started the task with a ‘type all the things’ mentality.