I guess we can all agree that writing your web application using a fortran framework to generate JS code is a bad idea.

But if you pick tfa's second example, picking Go vs. Rust for a new project, the language choice is secondary. Both languages were likely fine unless the project as a specific library requirement.

The main criteria to make the choice was likely whether the team had developers with some experience in that language, and whether using that language would make them feel dead inside in the morning when they check in ; and I'm pretty sure developers can be found that make either choice a great choice.

The point tfa's making, that picking a language defines culture, the hiring pipeline etc. is fitting neither the first example (team already there, and a rewrite is almost always a bad choice) nor the second example (team also already there, and the culture with them. Pipeline therefore irrelevant).