Lambda the Ultimate

IIRC there was a presentation on the use of ML in embedded systems at this year's CUFP. I think it was the talk by Lal George. You'll find other success stories in the archives of CUFP and in experience reports at ICFP.

Having had very bad experiences with Perl (newbies creating horrible code, Perl's "guru" using their own lingo making their code unmaintainable) , I suggested once going to Ruby, this was rejected as "more people knows Perl than Ruby, so use Perl".

But each time I have to use Perl, I'm always disgusted by how poor this language is, even though I make sure to create code that a beginner could understand..
At a glance, it takes me twice the time to write Perl than it would in a sane programming language (Ruby, Python)..

It sounds as though you attempted to apply the advice often attributed to Grace Hopper, "It's easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission". But it helps to have some sense of how your management is likely to perceive your solution ahead of time — blindsiding them with something totally unexpected and unfamiliar is unlikely to have a high success rate. "FP" is not the issue here.

It helps to think about it from your boss's perspective: he probably doesn't know anything about OCaml; he wonders how he'll manage to find and interview a replacement if you leave; he's concerned about how you'll fit in with the rest of your team if you start using a different language; whether your systems will integrate with existing tools and processes; and on and on.

For any hope of succeeding with an unusual technology choice under those circumstances, you need to neutralize the objections, or at least have laid some groundwork for that, before providing the solution. To do that, you first need to know what the specific objections are, so you need to have discussed it with your boss in some form.

This kind of thing is why good salespeople get paid so well: overcoming people's objections isn't always easy to do, and for something as "radical" as replacing C, it may not be possible, depending on the organization and circumstances.

One way to do it is to look for niche applications where the advantages of a quick and clean solution outweigh the risks. Prototyping is one promising area: a good FP prototype can be like an executable specification, and can often be developed very quickly. And there's always a possibility that management will be amenable to turning the prototype into the live system once they've had time to develop a comfort factor with the technology.

That said, you also have to remember that a big factor driving conservatism about language choice is what management are already familiar with. If you're dealing with a technical manager who spent a career programming in C before becoming a manager, that knowledge is part of their managerial skillset, and they're unlikely to be enthusiastic about the idea of employees using something they're entirely unfamiliar with.

Will your OCaml compiler emit C code?

... seems to be dominated by people who lack training in theoretical (or indeed any) Computer Science. Very few programmers (let alone managers) actually took "real" computer science courses at university, or indeed even software engineering courses. Not all of them (they're human!) come with any awareness of the work of those who went before. In such circumstances, is it surprising that pockets of industry are reactionary?

The order of forgiveness/permission seems less relevant than the blind hostility to modern computer science. It's certainly not universal, but it's also not rare, and I suspect it can't always be alleviated by management-management techniques...

The cruellest irony is that it is self-perpetuating: if it's easiest to hire someone who has, eg, no real understanding of this or that technique, then there's a strong incentive to avoid using this or that technique. And since much training is on the job, there grows up no general acceptance or knowledge of this or that technique.

Thus the trained are held hostage to a general shortage of training.

(And it might not help if, as I suspect, many Computer Science departments are distinctly unambitious in what they teach their undergraduates...)

If I were you, I would start looking for a new job. I would be furious if my boss reacted to my hard work learning and using a potentially valuable new technology with a stupid-ass analogy to "exotic holiday locations" by someone who clearly hasn't got a clue why I did what I did the way I did and apparently doesn't want to know.

Of course, maybe it wasn't your boss who made the stupid comment, in which case reassign the blame accordingly.

In 1980, I was an intern at a major corporation, and was asked to port a protocol testing framework to the main corporate machines. It was in regular use, but the person who wrote it had used an exotic language on an exotic operating system and then left the company. Fortunately, I had had a bit of experience with the language and system at university, so it was easier for me than for anyone with a permanent job there. In later years I sometimes wondered how long it took before they moved it back... because the exotic language was C, and the exotic OS was Unix.

The URL in my browser says "lambda-the-ultimate.org" but clearly I've landed on "slashdot.org." Oh, and a trojan is replacing words. E.g. "Linux" and "Windows" have become "OCaml" and "C."

But I think I can decode it. I'm pretty sure this is what the actual slashdot posting says:

* You Can't Use Linux in Industry *

I tried to use Linux at my work but my boss said we have to use Windows because Linux is too exotic

-- Sometimes you can use Linux

-- Not just Linux! My boss won't let me use FreeBSD

-- Maybe your boss had an expectation for Windows and doesn't have the staff to support Linux or the resources to train the staff
----- Don't judge me

-- Industry is full of bosses who aren't real sysadmins

-- Maybe you could cheat and use ReactOS

-- Your boss is an idiot
----- Agreed - he was being emotional about Linux

-- Reminds me of the time I tried to introduce Windows into a Novell shop

Please end this thread.

Please put "[admin] Please end this thread" in the subject next time and/or also don't then follow up with an additional post. Otherwise, people like me embarrass themselves by reading the "please end" after already extending the thread with a reply your later comment.

-t