[Haskell-cafe] funct.prog. vs logic prog., practical Haskell

[Petr Pudlak]

    Hi all,

I'd like to convince people at our university to pay more attention to
functional languages, especially Haskell. Their arguments were that

    (1) Functional programming is more academic than practical.
    (2) They are using logic programming already (Prolog); why is Haskell
	better than Prolog (or generally a functional language better than a
	logic programming language)?

(1) is easier to answer, there are a lots of applications at HaskellWiki, or
elsewhere around the Internet, written in Haskell, OCaml, etc.  Still, I
welcome comments on your experience, for example, if you have written some
larger-scale application in Haskell (or another a functional language) that is
not at HaskellWiki, and perhaps if/why you would recommend doing so to other
people.

(2) is harder for me, since I've never programmed in Prolog or another language
for logic programming. I'd be happy if anyone who is experienced in both Prolog
and Haskell could elaborate the differences, pros & cons etc.

    Thanks,
    Petr