I think you've misread my comment, or perhaps I've not expressed my position well enough. You're speaking like I've dismissed functional programming. I haven't. In fact, I really love it! The parts of it that have bled through into the more imperative/OO-focused languages, like C#'s LINQ and your Python example, are phenomenal and a joy to use.

So, here it is again: not saying functional is bad. Certainly not being dismissive or skeptical of it. I'd just like to see what compelling features haven't yet bled through. What makes pure functional or even just mostly-functional languages useful, that isn't yet in other languages? What is the killer feature, the killer problem they can still solve way easier?

If a good, experienced programmer dives deep into a language for a month and doesn't surface with anything compelling, how much more time should they spend? I'm not looking to master F#, I'm looking for a reason to master F#.

Can you give some examples? Many C-based languages have benefited by gaining strong functional aspects. With that, I haven't really found a reason to use a functional-focused language.

A while ago I decided to dedicate a month to coding in nothing but F# (my usual choices are C++ or C#) in attempt to find the areas they really kick-ass in, and just couldn't land on anything. There are some rare circumstances that I found it to be useful, but I just didn't find it compelling enough to warrant applying elsewhere. I'd never done functional programming before, I'm fully aware a month isn't long enough to master anything, but usually it's enough to discover if something has a really cool, earth-shattering aspect about it. So I'm honestly interested here -- what did I miss?

Every few months someone announces a new fad language despite them rarely bringing anything new to the table, or the new things they do bring not being significant enough to warrant switching from some other well-established one.

I'm actually happy with this one, because it serves an easier to justify purpose: migrating your existing PHP codebase and developers to something that is immediately better and familiar.

I wouldn't badmouth a former employer, specifically because future hiring managers would see it as a huge red flag. And that's kind of pathetic, if you think about it -- if you're having a terrible experience that your higher-ups show no care of fixing, is it not ethical to warn others away from a poisonous company? The industry has scored fear into us under a facade of "professionalism".

I guess it's a bit of a crapshoot if you get a bad seller, but the fact that prices are 1/4rd of what you'd pay to buy something similar domestically is a pretty good lure.

I've ordered twice from Ali Express -- once for a RTL2832 tuner, and once for a mini-Gorillapod knockoff. Both times I received exactly what the page advertised, in perfect condition and they continue to work great today.

It's already happening in the States. AT&T recently put its support behind Powermat, a competing and incompatible standard. They actually stripped Qi from a number of the phones they sell -- phones that on other carriers support it natively -- and instead offer Powermat charging cases for them.

You appear to be at least as knowledgable as me, so please correct me if my technical understanding is wrong here.

I doubt I'd even be able to perceive the lower amplitudes in a 96dB dynamic range. The reason for wanting 24-bit samples is that some music has low passages and high passages (HTTYD comes to mind) that allow your ears time to adjust to the volume. I'd like music to be able to do this and still have fine detail in each section.

Check out the ODAC. Built to be cheap, and objectively transparent at the jack, unlike most DACs which just quote the specs of a high-end DAC chip inside of them and ignore a mess of other crap on the PCB that degrades the signal.

FLAC has native support for gapless playback, but the player still needs to explicitly take advantage of it by not waiting until your current song finishes to start decoding the next one.

Gapless is more common among FLAC players, I guess simply because if you care enough to support FLAC you've probably got a higher chance of caring about the rest of the feature set, but it's far from guaranteed.

Caveat: self-identifying audiophile here, happy to admit I've spent way too much money for very little gain.

What's the output voltage and impedance? Crosstalk? Noise? THD? Dynamic range? If I plug to charge via USB while I'm playing it, will it isolate the noisy power line? You're trying to sell something "audiophile" without mentioning any of this? Really?

He makes a big deal about 192kHz audio. If you're targeting human ears, this is just a waste of space. I'd say the perfect format would be 48kHz/24bit. 48kHz to have plenty of room for a nice frequency cutoff, and 24-bit for music with a high dynamic range, like film scores and orchestral.

How about some features anyone can enjoy, like support for ReplayGain and gapless playback? Maybe make your store highlight music with a high dynamic range instead of offering a 24-bit copy of something with 8 bits of range and frequencies we can't hear?

I would absolutely love to have a compact, objectively transparent player that I can bring with me to the office or anywhere else. I just can't help feeling this won't be it. Too jaded?