The study may or may not be flawed, but what's really interesting to me is the reaction. We need more science in our computer science, which means more experiments and more results like this. We should also be open to the truth that we use the tools we like because we like them rather than because they're technically superior, even though we pimp them ad nauseum as though they are.

I once read an article about a technique Intel had developed for improving cooling of processors by changing the shape of the fan. I related this to some of my co-workers. One of them proceeded to tell me that this can't possibly work, backing up his argument with "reasoning" based on off-the-cuff remarks about the way air and physics "must" work. The fact that Intel had actually done this seemed to have no effect on his eagerness to continue the "debate" about this scientific fact.

I have a hard time believing that I get no benefit from using Haskell over Smalltalk, but if a body of science were to appear that cast doubt on that belief, the appropriate thing to do is change the belief, not stand around debating from imagined first principles why all the science is wrong and can't be so. Shut up, design an experiment and go prove it!

Perhaps there's little of this kind of actual science in our computer science because it would mean asking hard questions and accepting difficult truths. "The prisoner falls in love with his chains."