Write a mind-blowing sudoku solver, the thread will drift on webservers. Sh*t.

I think that we need mind-blowing sudoku solvers where Alonzo-Church-oriented minds shows the more Turing-Machine-inclined fellas what kind of terseness you can achieve with functional programmming (simple problems are the best to explain features of a programming paradigm), and I also believe that we need webservers that go beyond 10k simultaneous connections while still being simple and maintanable and modular (i.e., real life functional programming).

I just find that that thread shows perfectly how the functional programming folks perceive themselves as not having a real killer application for what they believe is a paradigm that suits a certain class of problems like a glove. "Haskell is the language that everybody talks about [like I am doing here :-)], but nobody uses" said Simon Peyton-Jones. There are only a few industrial applications of FP, I am thinking of the trading firm Jane Street and the security company galois.com . It didn't take off yet, I'd say.

But I don't want this thread to replicate that troll -- i.e. becaming an Emacs Vs Vim kind of discussion. I just believe that the thread linked above well reflects a situation deeply rooted in the programming community.