[rajinl]

As someone who has hired many developers at a large Investment bank, I always found that people that knew Haskell or some other functional programming language tended to be far more productive in standard OO languages. I know of many other technical leads and hiring managers that look at Haskell as a market signal. As someone who does code in F# and Haskell in my spare time, I don't expect to get job using either of these languages, but knowing these languages got me a foot in the door to do some of the most interesting work I have ever had (many years ago). From those in the Haskell community that I do interact with, most people do not expect to code in Haskell for their day jobs, and most of them would continue writing Haskell code outside of work regardless of whether Haskell becomes a commercial success or not. For me, Haskell is one of those languages that is just worth knowing, simply because it gives you a different perspective on the world and a new set of mental tools. If you haven't as yet played with a strict functional language, then you really should give it a try.Not because you expect to use it at work, rather because learning new things is fun and it will make you better at your job anyway as a side effect. If the logic you used in your argument holds, then we should really be coding in assembler.

[twic]

I've found the exact opposite. People i've worked with who are keen on Haskell have tended to be keen on building castles of unnecessary abstraction. People i've worked with who are not keen on Haskell are less so.

(Giuseppe, if you're reading this, you're the one exception!)