[lug] OT, Functional Languages

[Steve Sullivan]

The following is my own experience ... YMMV

I've used Haskell and Lisp, both many years ago, and the
hype from the functional people is always the same - these
languages are going to take over real soon now.

The Haskell community seems to be particularly enthusiastic.
I have to say it is a beautiful language, but complex
and difficult.  It was designed by a large committee who
apparently couldn't say "no" to any feature.
Perhaps the Haskell enthusiasm comes partly from having
mastered such a hard to use tool.

The difficulty with functional languages is they have no real
representation of state.  Try writing a file or updating a
database in Haskell.  They can do it but the mental and
programming machinery to do so are amazingly convoluted.

I think the functional languages will continue to be used
in niche markets, but for most programming we'll continue
to use languages that handle state changes better.

Steve


On Wed, Jan 28, 2009 at 12:06:28PM -0700, Stephen Queen wrote:
> 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
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