[Haskell-cafe] Why are OCaml and Haskell being used at these companies?

[jerzy.karczmarczuk at info.unicaen.fr]

Henning Thielemann writes: 

> On Tue, 13 Nov 2007 jerzy.karczmarczuk at info.unicaen.fr wrote:

>> Well, Henning, it is quite a statement: "certainly not the appropriate 
>> tools for reliable development and maintenance". Tell that to those 
>> legions of people who made dozens of thousands of programs in Lisp (or 
>> Scheme), in Smalltalk, etc. And now in Erlang...
> 
> I think there is a difference between 'many people have done it this way'
> and 'it was an appropriate choice to do so'.

You are absolutely RIGHT. The point is that I don't acknowledge the
right, I don't give myself either, to say that something is or is not
*appropriate* - at the long term, in this context. The only absolute truth
seems to be that *all* becomes obsolete sooner or later. We as well. 

So, I just appeal for a bit of modesty. You know what happens when people
start to claim that all done until now, concerning, say, the interpretation
of Bible, or our understanding of Democracy was inappropriate for reliable
development, etc. The sectarism is the lesser evil. The bigger one is the
totalitarism. 

The dynamic typing niche seems quite stable, and developed by serious
people. They may become obsolete one day, but playing Cassandras with
respect to them is, perhaps, not very promising. 

Well, I acknowledge to everybody the right - of course - to bear some
religious beliefs. I have mine, sometimes very strong... But I have quite
a mileage to go before I feel ready to issue prophecies. 

Jerzy Karczmarczuk