Does functional programming work?

[yigal chripun]

Andrei Alexandrescu Wrote:

> yigal chripun wrote:
> > 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?
> > 
> > That's a completely separate issue. Success of any product or idea depends on many aspects of which technical superiority is only one. I've used Smalltalk and it is most definitly superior to most other languages including D.  
> > 
> > Compare to cars - the most popular and successful design is that of the internal combustion engine yet it's the worst design in technical terms, there are more effecient and much cleaner designs.
> > 
> > compare to OSes - Unix died in the Unix wars and was replaced by a much worse system called windows which today has over 90% market share. Windows is by far the worst OS ever and yet this is the design that won. Technically speaking Linux today is much better and I enjoyed using it but ultimatly my main system today is windows 7 and not for technical reasons. 
> > 
> > Compare to Java - a mediocre language at best yet very popular and in fact I'd prefer to use Java over D too beacuse the fact that D is a (much) better langauge is a tiny aspect of productivity of a programmer. Java has a lot of amazing tools that support it and a lot of freely available libraries while in D we still can't have only one standard lib. 
> > So while it's fun to play with D, for real stuff I'll prefer Java with eclipse and all the standardized libs that make my life that much more simple. 
> 
> You didn't answer the question. What's your opinion about why Smalltalk 
> has failed to catch on?
> 
> Andrei

I thought I did. It's for simillar reasons as in my other examples. Java was a success because it was offered free of charge with a big supportive environment - libs, tools, documantation, etc and was promoted havily by Sun.
 Smalltalk OTOH was sold by a few vendors that didn't know how to promote it and build a vibrant comunity around it. Those vendors didn't supply libs for common stuff the industry uses and don't forget that one of its goals was to have an educational system for kids rather than something the industry will use. 

The industry rarely uses products based on its technical merits anyway - they don't and shouldn't care what language is technically "better". they care only for the bottom line. 
that means that Java is the best for the industry:
1) has many existing tools and libs that enhance productivity and reduced the amount of code that is neeed to be written in house. 
2) there are many Java programmers so it's easy to find better qulity programmers and pay them less. 
3) the write once run anywhere promise - obviously saves money.
4) Is standardized yet has many vendors - no need to invest when switching vendor.

BTW, none of the above apply to D.