Lets ride with that idea. The problem is that the info about functional programming show how maginificient it is for math-alike problems but barely never for crud-alike problems. I can understand some of the genius of haskell, but can't see how it make a better django or ruby on rails.
CRUD's apps have the stigma of be "patetic simple projects". Are not! Building erp-like software is dam damm hard. Making a search engine? Where clever math solve it? Where well understood ideas of scalability are clear? NOTHING against the complexity of fly at the speed of a business, deadlines measured not in months, but HOURS. Underfunded, not enough staff, working on legacy code, and that is only the surface.
Building a language to truly be a MASTER of CRUDs apps is something I truly wish for (the most close thing was Foxpro, IMHO).
Despite my love for python, and what I know for my use of .net, ruby, obj-c, I don't think is something well solve yet
CRUD apps are lowest common denominators. They store data and then retrieve it again. Functional languages are no worse at that than imperative languages, and they're better at "math-alike" problems.
I'm not sure that you can come up with a language that is targeted towards CRUD apps, because the entire concept of programming is CRD. The problem is building domain specific abstractions on top of a system that just flips bits and tells you what they say; and by "the problem" I mean "our job."
Do you know foxpro? The zero-friction to manipulate tables (and back them, nobody worry about the OOP impedance mismatch) the 0-necessity of use a ORM, the complete tooling to make a full app (with report engine included), the possibility to code store procedures in full foxpro (before become cool the idea of embed full languages inside db engines) and a lot of other things.
The weak link was the fragile database engine, but more important, the kill of the tool by MS.
The mix of a language, db engine, gui toolkit, and other things (similar, but far better than Acces) make it a tool truly made for this area of CRUD.
Plus, you could work in their REPL, and do commands as BROWSE and see the full data in a editable grid to use as you wish. I can't describe in words how functional the whole thing is. Is similar in the power of smalltalk, but instead of have a full reloadable code you have the full data at your hands.
CRUD's apps have the stigma of be "patetic simple projects". Are not! Building erp-like software is dam damm hard. Making a search engine? Where clever math solve it? Where well understood ideas of scalability are clear? NOTHING against the complexity of fly at the speed of a business, deadlines measured not in months, but HOURS. Underfunded, not enough staff, working on legacy code, and that is only the surface.
Building a language to truly be a MASTER of CRUDs apps is something I truly wish for (the most close thing was Foxpro, IMHO).
Despite my love for python, and what I know for my use of .net, ruby, obj-c, I don't think is something well solve yet