i'm assuming this guy has done real world work before? the idea of a compiler/language lead programmer effectively having lived in academia is terrifying on many levels.
best of luck to him at any rate. haskell and ghc are a cool language and compiler combo, one i have enjoyed for recreational programming time and time again.
"The idea of a compiler/language lead programmer effectively having lived in academia is terrifying on many levels."
The apparent cluelessness level of this statement is so high, I am unable to decide if this is just ignorance or very sophisticated trolling.
If the compiler dev working in a university or a research lab while developing the compiler is "terrifying", you should avoid C, C++, and Python, not to mention smalltalk, Pascal, Prolog, Common Lisp, Scheme, SML and OCaml ....
It's tempting to down vote him, but at the same time this is a real sentiment that some people seem to have. Perhaps it should be grouped into the current anti-intellectual trend. Either way, it's a real problem.
Why? Ignoring the ignorance does no good. Trend you've mentioned is nothing new, sadly, but if you are on the weaker side (the one that intellectuals always tend to find themselves on), the way to win is not to try to down vote clueless guys into the light-grey invisibility, imo, but to try to explain to them what's wrong with their view of the world.
The real world is crappy, and we're depending on these academic types to free us from the drollness of it, because we don't all have time to invent an STM. If I wanted to write CRUD apps all day and say that's real-world, I suppose I could, but I would rather enjoy enlightenment.
Function invocation overhead, you say? Why would I want that?
How about Garbage Collection? It'll never work.
It's their responsibility to create foundational research, and it's ours to filter through it and prove the good bits with fire.
'Practical' is a red-herring, I think. We have no way to predict the future, but we all care about progress.
best of luck to him at any rate. haskell and ghc are a cool language and compiler combo, one i have enjoyed for recreational programming time and time again.