Multiparadigm languages are here now and feel like the future. This is one answer to the problem raised by the article: certain things (like I/O) are less natu

Multiparadigm languages are here now and feel like the future. This is one answer to the problem raised by the article: certain things (like I/O) are less natural to do in a (purely) functional language, so a language which supports multiple paradigms can get the best of many worlds. Another answer would be to have better language integration, so that it would be totally trivial to, say, write the purely functional pieces of a system in Haskell, and hook them up to I/O code in an imperative language, a GUI in an object-oriented language, whatever. That way, the implementors of a given language could focus on supporting a single set of strengths, without having to provide foreign-feeling or half-assed devices for doing things that aren't natural to do in that language. Of course, this is an extremely difficult problem to solve, at least after-the-fact: once you have two languages that were designed without a specific plan for semantic integration with others, just passing simple data types between them can involve intractable difficulties. Thus, platforms which provide a common "metalanguage" are needed to make language integration more tractable. My impression is that we are seeing such platforms grow in both popularity and sophistication (e.g., the JVM), and accordingly seeing a rise in the popularity of languages that focus on a single paradigm but provide easy (or easier) integration with other languages on the same platform.