What benefits and challenges come with choosing a language with a large community versus a smaller one?

Languages with large communities often have a wealth of resources, including extensive documentation, tutorials, and forums. This makes it easier for devs to find solutions or seek help when needed. Supported ecosystem can significantly speed up development & provide solutions to common problems. Challenges include steeper learning curve and competition for talent. Smaller communities often foster closer-knit relationships among developers. This can lead to more direct interaction, collaboration, and a sense of shared responsibility. a high chance of leadership is there though along comes the challenges of fewer resources, such as documentation, libraries, and third-party tools. Developers might need to create more things from scratch.

Choosing a language with relatively large community for a project is a wise decision and such decision is being made at the start or beginning of any project but I also believe there is always a right tool for any job. The pros of choosing a language with a large community for a project when such language is also a right tool to accomplishing the task are numerous and could include getting support from other experienced developers, always have different views on a particular subject because of the pool of blogs, articles, books and publications that are available and that slip in some doubts as to whether one is solving a solution using the best approach especially if you are a beginner in the field.

You probably don't have to reinvent the wheel, as there will be resources available for you to use. Likewise, if you have questions regarding the implementation, you can ask the community and the probability of finding someone who has the solution is much higher.

I think in some ways, the concern about increased competition is overblown a little. While there are more people involved with tools that have a larger community, there are usually still only a small number of people who take the time to go through the coursework/documentation etc necessary to get truly good with using that tool. Basically while there are a lot of people who use it there are likely still relatively few people great at using it.

I enjoy exploring tools with smaller communities and there of course pros and cons to using them. In my experience the main advantage is how much you learn by being able to play a part in making key decisions related to a tool. And on a related note you can collaborate more closely with others in the small community who are also making the key decisions along with you, so the networking there can beneficial.

To add to this, you have to search kind of further and wider, online and in books, etc. to find the answers you want. Or like this entry has stated, you might have to experiment on your own to figure out a workaround to answer the question you want to answer.

The main thing about choosing a language for a project, shouldn't be the size of the community, but first what the project requirements are, and if the language can fulfill these requirements without extra work. Choose the right tool for the job and you'll be happier. If you find that there are two languages that fulfill your project's needs, then you can look at the community. Is the community supportive, or do they tend to be negative to someone starting out? Do you feel comfortable working within that community or do you feel overwhelmed? How up-to-date is the documentation for the language?

Personally if I’m working on a product meant for more than say a hundred people to use, I would lean toward a tool with a larger community because I know that some amount of people have seen it functioning well and use it regularly. Whereas for a small tool, it often doesn’t have any credibility yet or anyone saying whether it actually works well or not. I might be more inclined to use a smaller tool for learning purposes, or if I want to contribute to a community.