[mercury-users] The Mercury Language

[Tennessee]

Well, on the note of why Mercury isn't used - part of it has to be that it
isn't taught at Uni!

The only places you could really expect it to be used are in research
areas, where programmers can easily pick their own language, and not have
to worry about it.

I use Mercury when I can, because I like programming in Mercury. It's nice
to use, it works on the whole quite well, and it's quick to use. But I
wouldn't use it where I was working, because other people might have to use
my code. Similarly, I can't use it in most of my subjects, because projects
are required to be submitted in C or C++.

Mercury is never going to get into industry from the bottom up, as it were,
because there are too many obstacles to the programmer. It's going to have
to gain recognition as being useful for certain types of problems. For
example, Anthls and I are doing neural net stuff. If we both become rich
and famous, then people will use Mercury to do neural net stuff. Mercury
needs to have an advantage in order to be accepted, beyond the fact that
we all like using it.

And the most likely place for any experimental language to be trialled is
in research. Perhaps once it's had a few successes, more people will take
it seriously.

Better docs would also be good! I would have given up on it by now if there
hadn't been people around to help me. No way could I have just picked it
up.

-T

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