SDTimes’ Larry O’Brien predicts that functional programming could be the “Next Big Thing in mainstream development.” He believes that functional programming languages “will fill the slot between the browser (where JavaScript is deeply entrenched) and the system (where performance demands and the broad availability of gcc seem to provoke a ‘better the devil you know’ loyalty to C and C++).”
O’Brien adds, “In other words, functional programming fits right into the mainstream of corporate development, where legacy codebases are large, programmer productivity must be high across teams with different experience levels, and tooling is important.”
In O’Brien’s opinion, functional languages offer better IDE integration and they may help solve one of programming’s current trickiest issues: concurrency.
