Re: Industry versus academia

[Bob Cassels <address@hidden>]

gaucho_puro@yahoo.com wrote:

>>One thing that I've always hoped would happen (but hasn't yet) is that new,
>>advanced languages would be able to do things that are not merely difficult
>>or tedious in existing languages, but well-nigh impossible.  In that case,
>>and assuming what they do is valuable to industry, I think industry types
>>would rush to hire pointy-headed academics who know about monads and
>>continuations etc., simply because that's the only way the job is going to
>>get done.  
>>
>>    
>>
>
>Maybe it would be enough for an advanced language to do things that can be
>done in other languages, but do them so much more quickly and provide
>such a better solution in the end than would a conventional language that
>the clear choice would be the advanced language.
>
>I have read Paul Graham's essay on how Lisp enabled his company to produce
>better online stores faster than anyone else could.  If there were more stories
>like this, I think the industry would take notice that, although they could
>do the same kinds of things with languages like C++, some other language
>could make their programmers so much more productive that it would be insane
>to do things "the old way."
>
>  
>
At Symbolics, we had many such stories.  Unfortunately, the reality was 
that the learning curve was pretty steep.  So the small number of people 
who made it up the curve could be fantastically productive.  But too 
many customers never saw the productivity effect.

So I think you need more than stories.  You need to enable the average 
programmer (or at least a significant number of programmers) to be 
enough more productive to convince everyone (programmer, management, 
etc.) to put the energy into switching to "the new way".