Lambda the Ultimate

Different language communities have different priorities (e.g., dynamism vs. static verification), but one shouldn't a priori expect their actual decisions to reflect these goals. Do some languages (and their design processes) have better track records than others?

Language communities evolve over time, and priorities change. How well do standard bodies adapt to these changes? Does the rethoric change at all? Does it change before or after the fact?

I've seen some studies about these issues, but hardly enough. The Ada design community would be a good case study.

Funny, I get the feeling that the only people who think CT and type systems are sexy are hardasses like me. :/

Long time readers know that I think language evolution and development practices aren't studied enough

Not sure, whether they are studied enough or not, but there is defenitely not a lot of results in the area. There may be various reasons for that, either users of social sciences ignore computer science, or users of computer science are not skilled in social sciences ("or" here is neither exclusive nor exhaustive).

Obviously this is less sexy that C-T

Do you think merits of CT are overhyped? As a neophyte I am a strong believer CT is great at providing a meta-theory to develop theories, a methodology for research, a language for discussions, eh, well, Goguen already mentioned all this :-)

Of course, no tool can substitute genuine thought... But it can help a lot. If only studies of programming communities could be performed as comfortably as studies of, e.g., universal properties, I believe we would see much more results than currently. Should we ask professional anthropologists and ethnographs to study history of Linux or JBoss? And how real was the infuence of cult of personality on the development of some languages? And how faster it is to deploy a bazaar compared to a cafedral?