On Oct 5, 2007, at 1:59 AM, Bayley, Alistair wrote:
So the question becomes: do you want to attract/seduce this kind of programmer? Let's assume the answer is yes :-)
Hmm...
... Then what sort of language should you use in your promotional paragraph? I don't think "polymorphism", "monads/monadic effects", "higher order functions", and even "type classes" should be used. These terms will be universally unfamiliar to the target audience, and will alienate them.
Maybe. Good. Some readers will say to themselves `this language appears to have many unfamiliar features ... I must look into this!' At this point, these are only ones who are going to thrive anyway. From what I've seen, the greatest hurdle is the features that ARE familiar, particularly strong static typing. Everyone knows static typing from Pascal, C, C++, Java ... know what I'm saying? If there's some way to defeat this false recognition, that should help a lot. Or maybe that's good too, for more survivor self selection. Maybe a good slogan would be `like LISP, but with strong static typing!' Donn Cave, donn@drizzle.com