Does functional programming work?

[Nick Sabalausky]

"retard" <re at tard.com.invalid> wrote in message 
news:hhsmop$1aev$5 at digitalmars.com...
> Mon, 04 Jan 2010 07:50:12 -0200, Ary Borenszweig wrote:
>
>> retard wrote:
>>> Fri, 01 Jan 2010 12:19:25 -0800, Walter Bright wrote:
>>>
>>>> Nick Sabalausky wrote:
>>>>> "Walter Bright" <newshound1 at digitalmars.com> wrote in message
>>>>> news:hhgvqk$8cj$2 at digitalmars.com...
>>>>>> An interesting counterpoint to the usual FP hype:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> http://prog21.dadgum.com/55.html
>>>>> Didn't read the original article, but the one being linked to is
>>>>> completely in line with how I feel about not just FP, but all
>>>>> programming paradigms, for example, OO: It's great as long as you
>>>>> don't pull a Java or (worse yet) a Smalltalk and try to cram
>>>>> *everything* into the paradigm.
>>>> I agree, the old programming-language-as-religion problem. I first ran
>>>> into this when I read the original Pascal book, and became enamored
>>>> with it. I tried doing a modest project in Pascal using a pure Pascal
>>>> compiler.
>>>>
>>>> 80% went smoothly, the other 20% spent wrestling with the nanny
>>>> language tsk-tsking consumed nearly 100% of the time spend on the
>>>> project. I just couldn't get things that had to be done, done, as the
>>>> language would shut off all the avenues.
>>>>
>>>> When I then picked up K+R C, I never wrote another line of Pascal. It
>>>> so soured me on Pascal that I never got on the later bandwagons of
>>>> Modula II, Delphi, TurboPascal, etc. Never even looked at them.
>>>
>>> The programming-language-as-religion problem exists only in your
>>> imagination.
>>
>> You don't have an idea how many times I heard the phrase "Please,
>> please, let this work" out of a programmer's mouth in front of a
>> computer.
>
> Now what does that prove? That the person has religious beliefs or that
> programming languages are religions? My point was, it's just stupid to
> claim that some languages like ML or Iswim are religions. They were
> originally built for scientific use, namely for proving mathematical
> properties of some systems and as a proof of concept. I guess lolcode
> isn't a religion in your book because not only is it useless, it's fun
> unlike most functional languages.

Aren't there people who swear by those languages for normal software 
development purposes? And even if not, there are certainly languages out 
there that are "cram everything into this paradigm, yay purity!" and *are* 
either intended for everyday use or used by people for everyday use.