This recently became clear to me. With functional programming (FP), you are, in effect, trying to abstract out time as much as possible.

Non-FP languages let you abstract out concepts. You don't worry about sending SYN packets, you just start communication with socket(). You don't worry about the details of how directory entries are stored, you just run 'ls' or 'dir'.

Here's a slightly wacky idea for learning a new programming language (or two). This only works if you're fairly experienced programmer already.

Start with a good, fairly advanced programming book such as Peter Norvig's "Paradigms of Artificial Intelligence Programming". This book has all its examples written in Common Lisp. Then translate the examples into another language. In my case, Haskell. I don't really know Common Lisp all that well but that's fine.

Heh. I've been on Slashdot quite a while, and this is the first time I've posted a journal entry. I've been thinking about setting up a blog for myself, maybe I'll just use Slashdot instead.

At any rate, I wonder how many other people go through the same process as I do for picking friends in Slashdot.