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On Wed, 2009-02-25 at 09:17 +0000, Ulf Wiger wrote:
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>Why do you think people stay away from functional programming
> languages in droves?
In my experience, succeeding in commercial software development is
usually more about understanding your limits and capacity, more than
using the sharpest possible tool (better the devil you know...)
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From that perspective, it's not so much a matter of 'staying away in
droves' as sticking with what you know.
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This is especially true in large companies, where multiplying a
technical cost assessment with a "project factor" of 5-10 seems like
a perfectly sensible thing to do*. Here, 'predictable' beats
'brilliant' (almost) every time.
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* Indeed, as long as same company makes a healthy profit, who's to say
that it /isn't/ sensible?
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As usual, Ulf gives an answer that gives me some hope. This is the kind of thinking I like to see instead of the far more common "they just don't <B>get</B> it" or the far more obnoxious version of the same thinking "they're just too stupid to understand it". Even the various "Sun and Microsoft marketing killed the language landscape" answers beg the question because even if it were true, why did Sun and Microsoft use C and C++ and later "improve" upon these with Java and C# respectively?<BR>
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-- <BR>
<B>Michael T. Richter</B> <<A HREF="mailto:ttmrichter@gmail.com">ttmrichter@gmail.com</A>> (<B>GoogleTalk:</B> ttmrichter@gmail.com)<BR>
<I>A well-designed and humane interface does not need to be split into beginner and expert subsystems. (Jef Raskin)</I>
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