[lug] OT, Functional Languages

[Nate Duehr]

It seems like for the 20+ years I've been around computers and reading trade pubs, etc... that there's always someone saying things like this about every language, every few years.  Pascal was supposed to make a "big comeback" too.

Erlang is interesting, and there was some very well done research showing that you can build some damn-near bug-free systems (that actually got built) that fail very gracefully with it -- but that same research group (at Ericsson) was all crap-canned due to Ericsson deciding that strategically they "weren't pursuing their core competencies" by creating a language and studying it.  They "cost-cut" the group off at the neck.  

Meanwhile, their product that ran on Erlang has an incredibly low error rate, and always did.  Oops.  Bad management on that one, methinks.  But they probably disagree.

I can't speak to Lisp or Haskell, but we all know emacs never dies... and it's written in lisp... but it's also got that "aura of excellence" just because RMS worked heavily on it 20 years ago.  LOL!  The magic touch of a guy with lots of interesting ideas who doesn't hold a day job... 

No wonder he has time to type all those "L)ots of I)nfuriating S)ets of P)arenthesis."  Heck, he even used the language to create a text editor that would type them FOR him.  Talk about recursive!

The programmer herds seem to meander (or thunder some years... Java anyone?) back and forth between languages, but it never stops... wait a year or two and they'll be all but forgotten again... 

Seems like the trick for young or new programmers is to catch the right wave, get a job, and then just keep learning languages as their company execs read about the "latest hot language" in their trade rags.  

And there's always a few openings everywhere for good Assembly programmers, it seems.  Low-level is sometimes where it's at... 

Still glad I'm not a programmer,
Nate 

-----Original Message-----
From: lug-bounces at lug.boulder.co.us [mailto:lug-bounces at lug.boulder.co.us] On Behalf Of Stephen Queen
Sent: Wednesday, January 28, 2009 12:06 PM
To: Boulder Linux Users Group -- General Mailing
Subject: [lug] OT, Functional Languages

On one of the forums I read on a regular basis, I see where a lot of
developers think that functional languages such as Haskell, Erlang,
and Lisp are going to be the languages to watch in the near future.

I was wondering if anybody on this list had any experience with theses
functional languages, and/or had any comments?

Thanks,
Steve