[mercury-users] The Mercury Language

[Michael Day]

> So in my experience, one of the main reason declarative languages
> haven't caught on is that courses may initially start with some
> declarative component, but quickly the courses become weighted to
> producing imperative programs so the students never learn to think
> declaratively.

Indeed! Only some universities make a concession to declarative
programming at all, usually ML or Prolog, with very strong implicit
assumptions that you wouldn't use such a language for *real* work.

I don't think the "average programmer" would have any trouble with
declarative languages, if this mythical average was free to choose
whatever language they liked for their projects (usually impossible) and
was aware of the wide range of languages available.

A quick tally at Borders revealed umpteen books on object oriented
development and all the associated fashionable languages, but if there
were any books on logical or functional programming I could not find them.

Michael

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