Welcome to “The Functional Web”
Despite the fact that FP languages have been around for just about forever in terms of the history of electronic computing - John Mc-Carthy invented Lisp in the late 1950s, for example - they’ve never shared the popularity or usage levels of their imperative counterparts. For years, the majority of industry-oriented developers considered functional languages to be inefficient and suitable only for academic exercises, and the fact that functional language syntax and idioms differed so widely from what practicing programmers were accustomed to did nothing to help these languages gain popularity.
Fortunately, however, FP languages appear to be gaining in popularity for a variety of reasons, most of them centered on different facets of the perpetual themes of performance and efficiency.
Steve Vinoski
http://www2.computer.org/portal/c/document_library/get_file?uuid=2c7ec47f-a29c-4873-b721-88cec5e5646d&groupId=53319