I came accross this recently, along with some of the other papers guys from microsoft have put out about implementing functional languages within excel.
I have to remind myself that these came out prior to the 2007 & 2010 versions of excel, and they ignored the most important recommendations and went with UI based "improvements" instead.
These guys at Microsoft Cambridge Research are wasted as a talent, Its as if MSFT have "bought" them as a way of keeping ideas that are disruptive to their current streams of income under control.
how is consistently publishing papers and pushing the boundaries of PL further "keeping ideas disruptive to their current streams of income under control"?
I mean the ideas are not hoarded, they are published, F# is open sourced and SPJ hacks on haskell. Where did you draw your conclusion from?
I think C# disproves this fairly well. C# has lambda functions, monads, type inference (either now or next version). People like Eric Meijer have moved from pure research to product groups.
I have to remind myself that these came out prior to the 2007 & 2010 versions of excel, and they ignored the most important recommendations and went with UI based "improvements" instead.
These guys at Microsoft Cambridge Research are wasted as a talent, Its as if MSFT have "bought" them as a way of keeping ideas that are disruptive to their current streams of income under control.