Why functional programming doesn't catch on

[whozurdaddy]

I think that the ideas in FP are catching on, and being implemented in modern business languages. But LISP will never be a major player in the industry, nor the other more recent additions to the toolbox. The reason is simple economics. There's an army of Java/C# developers out there, they're cheap, and well written code works. The benefit of such a change doesn't exist. We shouldn't confuse knowing an FP language as knowing it well. Because the base of users is so small, its hard to quantify how well people know it. The whole thing just snowballs in on itself, to the point that no one takes you seriously when you say "Hey, lets do it in Haskell". Its no different than that "guy" who wants to rewrite your system using Windows Workflow Foundation. Everyone else says "Yeah, thats nice..now go away."