[deeviant]

I really could not have said it better. Programmers seem much more likely to feel the need to prove they are smarter than their peers than the average population and functional languages seem to be a very popular I'm-smarter-than-you badge to bandy about.

I think the penetration of functional programming speaks for itself. If a tool is clearly superior, you'd expect it to do great things, and to do it often. I hear tons of excuses but not one that has made any sense.

To be clear, I'm not say functional languages are worthless, I am succinctly saying that they are not measurably more productive than the usual suspects and I say this after having a rather pleasant experience with erlang working on a rather huge ejabberd plugin.

[amazing_jose]

Going philosophical (and I do this a lot), it's really about exploration of the solutions space. I think the whole profession has moved a step forward and we need metaphors, tools and architectures for systems where one computer (regardless of the number of CPUs or architecture) is just a component in our systems. Functional programming (not Functional design, think Map/Reduce) is a late attempt to improve on a "semi-solved" problem: to produce high quality systems that run inside a unique computer. Late attempts always can contribute, but they only offer some negligible benefits that doesn't balance properly with the added complexity (in technology or training... the famous learning curve). These attempts will always be welcome and will improve some layers on the systems we design, it's just that as move forward the benefits will go into a diminished returns dynamic.