Remember that Banks/Financial Firms/Investment Banks were among the first big uses of punch card readers, mainframes, cobol, C, C++ (and OOP), VBA, Java.. I'm not saying if I like any of those languages (my presence on this list should give a clue how I feel) but investment banks picking up FP and Haskell bodes quite well for Haskell in the future. Max On Aug 10, 2010, at 12:59 AM, Tom Hawkins wrote:
Good, we need more functional programmers actually solving real problems. But please put your skills to work in an industry other than investment banking.
I've received a lot mail on this comment; mostly positive. Here's one from someone who wishes to remain anonymous:
First of all I would like to say that I like your work regarding e.g. Atom. Second, I would like to know what exactly is bad about a Haskell job in investment banking as a lot of good programmers work in this industry.
It's disproportionate. 95% of the job offerings in functional programming are with investment firms. I believe investment banking is important, but does it really need to dominate a large percentage of the world's top tier programmers? Is computing the risk of derivative contracts more important than pursuing sustainable energy, new drug discovery, improving crop yields, etc. Some will argue investment banking enables all of these things -- and I'm sure many people in the industry go to work everyday feeling proud of their contributions. But I just think most of this talent is going in to improve the bottom line and little else.
(Yes, I realize that's were the money is, and that's who's hiring. Actually I'm very glad. Investment banking is the first industry to adopt functional programming on a large scale. And others will follow.)
-Tom _______________________________________________ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe