Does functional programming work?

[retard]

Sat, 02 Jan 2010 12:23:36 -0800, Walter Bright wrote:

> yigal chripun wrote:
>> Have you ever actually used Smalltalk?? I have used it and it's the
>> easiest language to use by far, having conditionals as methods of
>> Boolean is much better, easier to read and more flexiable.
>> 
>> The beauty of smalltalk is that you can easily add new "language"
>> features in the library with little effort and they do not look foreign
>> to the language. in fact, almost all of smalltalk is implemented in the
>> library and it only has 5 actual keywords.
> 
> 
> What's your opinion, then, about why Smalltalk has failed to catch on?

The same question could be asked just about any language. If you have 
followed the internet discussion & hype around JVM/.NET languages - these 
are all very young languages and share many aspects. Languages like 
Clojure seem to be doing well.. Why? Charismatic leaders, perhaps? 
"Clojure: Lisp done right" - I don't believe that, but many do. People 
are sheeple. They believe that languages are religions. Marketing 
matters. Technical superiority rarely has much effect.