Comment by SolubleSnake

My opinions on functional languages in a practical professional setting is that they largely seem like a curiosity and a bit of an oddity when you encounter them in business software at work. I worked at a company migrating a huge amount of engineering data between two different PLM systems (in our case this was data around peristaltic pumps - 3D models, 2D designs, code, electrical schematics etc). We were using model manager for the source system and windchill for the target system and model manager uses Lisp for its automation of data management tasks and despite the fact I'd had to use Miranda (the precursor to Haskell) in my functional programming module at university (UCL) I found using Lisp for something so kind of quotidian didn't really give me the same feeling that 'this is something really special' when using it for something fairly mundane. It didn't really use any of the advantages of functional languages (and their advantages are sort of more around quite academic things anyway).

Going out of your way to use functional languages at work seems a bit like deliberately using a fountain pen and purposefully writing all business communication in a handwritten beautiful cursive style - it's kind of a cute affectation rather than actually of benefit