New technologies are usually introduced by smart people who have the vision, and drive to communicate the benefits of doing it differently and usually better to their peers, and seniors.Few senior IT people will have any FP knowledge, or maybe exposure to the mathematical or CS fundamentals of FP over imperative programming.
New technologies need an environment where spending can afford a degree of risk.
I the UK, few graduates outside a limited set will have experienced Haskell, OCAML, or Erlang. The talented will dabble for the fun of it. Once MS push F#, the situation will change. Look at the history and acceptance of C++ in the 1990's.
--
Andrew in Edinburgh,Scotland.
A Haskell convert
On 11 August 2010 08:30, Ketil Malde
<ketil@malde.org> wrote:
Henning Thielemann <schlepptop@henning-thielemann.de> writes:
> about functional programming jobs in investment banking ...
>> I don't think this is bad: having talented people recruited to work
>> on functional programming will improve the technology for all of us.
> I'm not sure I follow this opinion in general. Analogously I could say:
> Supporting military is a good idea, since they invest in new
> technologies.
Sure, if the premise is that investment banks (or the military) are evil,
then it is morally questionable to support them. If these are the
major consumers of functional programming, one might question the ethics
of working on FP in general as well.
But as I interpreted this thread, the premise was not about the morality
of specific sectors, but rather that finance "takes away" too much of
the FP talent. My opinion is that we should rather appreciate business
or organizations willing to fund FP - perhaps especially for "evil"
organizations, where funds would otherwise go to more nefarious
purposes.
-k
--
If I haven't seen further, it is by standing in the footprints of giants
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