"Vasili I. Galchin"
I am very curious about the readiness of trading and banking industries to adopt FPLs like Haskell:
Yes, I've noticed that, too. And it goes both ways - it's an industry of which the computer science crowd tends to be unaware as well. Some hypotheses, off the top of my head, and with no particular knowledge about the industry as such: * The financial business is very competitive, and a small advantage (like making a transaction a minute before your competitors) makes a big difference. In a more conservative industry, nobody got fired for buying IBM. * The financial business are developing mathematical models which map more easily to functional languages. (And have math-savvy people who are able to understand them). OTOH, engineers ought to understand math, too. * Culturally, engineers tend to hire people like themselves, which imposes a lot of inertia. Perhaps the financials have a more enlightened world view? * Mistakes are very expensive, and financials thus value correctness more than other industries, since actual money is at stake, not just less tangible values like customer relations (which can be remedied by other means). * Trends - perhaps an institution is doing particularly well, and it incidentally is using an FPL. The financial sector being no smarter than other sectors, other businesses might pick up FPLs for what is basically cargo-cult reasons. * Financials have the financial elbowroom to pay high salaries. Thus they get smarter people, who as we all know are more likely to choose functional languages. -k -- If I haven't seen further, it is by standing in the footprints of giants