[mercury-users] The Mercury Language

[Peter Schachte]

Hi all,

There is an interesting interview with Brian Kernighan at

	http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~mihaib/kernighan-interview/index.html

When asked why functional languages don't catch on, his reply was:

    I think, speaking only for myself, part of the reason that ML in
    particular, and functional programming languages in general have not
    caught on more broadly, is that they're aimed at people who have
    mathematical sophistication, who are able to think in more abstract
    ways, that lots of other folks, and I include myself, have trouble with.
    Whereas languages like C are very operational, you can see how every
    single piece of them maps into what's going on in the machine in a very
    very direct sense. If I had been brought up at a different time and in a
    different environment perhaps I'd be totally comfortable in ML and would
    find C unsafe, a little dangerous, not very expressive.

I think all of this applies as much to Mercury as it does to ML.  So the
question I have for those interested in seeing Mercury "catch on" is:  is
the correct solution to this to educate the masses to use more sophisticated
abstractions, or would we do better trying to simplify some of the concepts
(while retaining Mercury's declarativeness) to make it easier for the
average developer or uni student to pick up?  Or is it better to accept
Mercury's current level of popularity and get on with the research?

I'm not trolling; I'm interested in what Mercurians think about this.

-- 
Peter Schachte <schachte at cs.mu.OZ.AU>  And it came to pass that in the hands
http://www.cs.mu.oz.au/~schachte/      of the ignorant, the words of the
Phone:  +61 3 8344 9166                Bible were used to beat plowshares
Fax:    +61 3 9348 1184                into swords. -- Alan Wilson Watts 
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