2004 Commercial Users of Functional Programming
(CUFP)
Sept 18, 2004
Co-located with ICFP

 

Functional languages have been under academic development for over 25 years, and are still proving to be very fertile ground for programming language research. Consequently, most of the development focus of these languages is driven by academic and theoretical questions. More recently, however, functional languages have been very successfully used in commercial, industrial, and government settings, where their advantages have been able to be leveraged dramatically.

 

The goal of CUFP is to act as a voice for commercial users of functional programming languages and technology. It aims to help functional programming become increasingly viable as a technology for use in the commercial, industrial, and government space, by providing a forum for FP professionals to share their experiences and ideas, whether business, management or engineering. It also aims to enable the formation and cementing of relationships and alliances that further the commercial use of functional languages. Providing user feedback to language designers and implementers is not a primary goal of the workshop, though it will be welcome if it occurs.

Program plans

The meeting lasted a full day, with a mix of invited and submitted presentations, plus discussion sessions.

 

Topics ranged over a wide area, including:

  • Case studies both of successful and unsuccessful uses of functional programming;
  • Business opportunities and risks from using functional languages;
  • Enablers for functional language use in a commercial setting;
  • Barriers to the adoption of functional languages;
  • Mitigation strategies for overcoming limitations of FP;

 

There will be no published proceedings, as the meeting was intended to be more a discussion forum than a technical interchange. A full report of the workshop appeared in the Functional Programming column of the December 2004 issue of SIGPLAN Notices.

 

The final schedule includes one extra impromptu talk. Speakers slides will be added as them become available.

Committee

Koen Claessen. koen at chalmers.se

Byron Cook. bycook at microsoft.com

David Fox. david.fox at lindows.com

John Lalonde. lalonde at abstrax.com

John Launchbury. john at galois.com (Chair)