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Teams have managed to deliver products in also sorts of languages, Cobol for example. Did the choice of language benefit the delivery, maintenance and TCO is

Teams have managed to deliver products in also sorts of languages, Cobol for example. Did the choice of language benefit the delivery, maintenance and TCO is my question. If I choose Haskell/Scala over Java (FYI as a programmer I'm not a fan of Java) what benefit will it actually bring the business, and does it out weight the negatives, over what time frame and how much risk?

hocuspocus 5y ago
There are technical tradeoffs everywhere. But you cannot make a caricature of FP developers, supposedly not willing to spend energy on delivering products. Lots of tech companies have proved that you don't need to follow Google and constrain your workforce to a small list of vetted languages. Most teams who chose Haskell, OCaml, Scala, Rust... are productive and able to deliver products.
- captaincaveman 5y ago
  But my point is does moving to FP, which is the direction of change, actually bring any benefits to the actual outcome? My question is simple as that, yet as engineers we get lost in the detail of the doing and some hand wavy suggestion that it makes things better, yet where is the actual evidence for this? Be pro FP or not, or any other programming paradigm, lets say logic based (prolog etc), where is there any measures on how it benefits outcome. I appreciate this isn't something that can be easily measured, but that is arguably a key problem with the state of the industry, that its emotion, intuition and bandwagon driven.
- captaincaveman 5y ago
  > There are technical tradeoffs everywhere. But you cannot make a caricature of FP developers, supposedly not willing to spend energy on delivering products. That is my personal experience, a tiny data point, again where are the studies that give some actual useful guidance? I wrote a great project using Racket, everyone should use Racket, its cool, lets blog it ... gains momentum, its new its exciting it promises change ... people start to have different experiance, bad decisions are made ... new bandwagon, lets all rush to that yay. Having been around for long enough to see this cycle, I think it's right to ask for some well thought evidence, or gathering of trade offs to help decision making.

hocuspocus 5y ago

There are technical tradeoffs everywhere. But you cannot make a caricature of FP developers, supposedly not willing to spend energy on delivering products. Lots of tech companies have proved that you don't need to follow Google and constrain your workforce to a small list of vetted languages. Most teams who chose Haskell, OCaml, Scala, Rust... are productive and able to deliver products.

captaincaveman 5y ago
But my point is does moving to FP, which is the direction of change, actually bring any benefits to the actual outcome? My question is simple as that, yet as engineers we get lost in the detail of the doing and some hand wavy suggestion that it makes things better, yet where is the actual evidence for this? Be pro FP or not, or any other programming paradigm, lets say logic based (prolog etc), where is there any measures on how it benefits outcome. I appreciate this isn't something that can be easily measured, but that is arguably a key problem with the state of the industry, that its emotion, intuition and bandwagon driven.
captaincaveman 5y ago
> There are technical tradeoffs everywhere. But you cannot make a caricature of FP developers, supposedly not willing to spend energy on delivering products. That is my personal experience, a tiny data point, again where are the studies that give some actual useful guidance? I wrote a great project using Racket, everyone should use Racket, its cool, lets blog it ... gains momentum, its new its exciting it promises change ... people start to have different experiance, bad decisions are made ... new bandwagon, lets all rush to that yay. Having been around for long enough to see this cycle, I think it's right to ask for some well thought evidence, or gathering of trade offs to help decision making.