On Oct 5, 2007, at 1:59 AM, Bayley, Alistair wrote:
So the question becomes: do you want to attract/seduce this kind of
programmer? Let's assume the answer is yes :-)
Hmm...
... Then what sort of
language should you use in your promotional paragraph? I don't think
"polymorphism", "monads/monadic effects", "higher order functions",
and
even "type classes" should be used. These terms will be universally
unfamiliar to the target audience, and will alienate them.
Maybe. Good. Some readers will say to themselves `this language
appears
to have many unfamiliar features ... I must look into this!' At this
point, these
are only ones who are going to thrive anyway.
From what I've seen, the greatest hurdle is the features that ARE
familiar,
particularly strong static typing. Everyone knows static typing from
Pascal,
C, C++, Java ... know what I'm saying? If there's some way to defeat
this
false recognition, that should help a lot.
Or maybe that's good too, for more survivor self selection. Maybe a
good
slogan would be `like LISP, but with strong static typing!'
Donn Cave, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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