> > it's clear that FP ideas are becoming mainstream >_without_ any need of help from the financial community >
This is far from clear - unless you want to deny that the financial community has had any impact on FP... > due to Objective C with its Smalltalk influence ...and it's interesting to note that, had it not been for the financial community there's a strong chance that NeXT / Objective-C would have died years ago (finance were one of their main markets). --Ben On 12 Aug 2010, at 03:03, Richard O'Keefe wrote: > > On Aug 11, 2010, at 7:30 PM, Ketil Malde wrote: >> Sure, if the premise is that investment banks (or the military) are evil, >> then it is morally questionable to support them. If these are the >> major consumers of functional programming, one might question the ethics >> of working on FP in general as well. >> >> But as I interpreted this thread, the premise was not about the morality >> of specific sectors, but rather that finance "takes away" too much of >> the FP talent. > > One (but only one, and I do not say the major one) > of the aspects of the "global financial crisis" is that > bankers created a number of "advanced" financial instruments > which nobody really knew how to value. > "Advanced" computational models were developed for the purpose. > People were warning about this 10 years ago or more; I bought a > couple of books about it from a remainder shop. > > If functional programming gets associated in the profession's > eyes with *that* kind of programming, it will not do FP any good. > > In any case, what with lambda expressions already in Apple's C > (of all languages!), it's clear that FP ideas are becoming mainstream > _without_ any need of help from the financial community. (Actually, > that particular one is probably due to Objective C with its Smalltalk > influence, so the "functional" origin here is ultimately Lisp.) > > _______________________________________________ > Haskell-Cafe mailing list > Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org > http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe _______________________________________________ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe