I first learned to program via functional languages. BASIC and then PASCAL were the tools I learned the fundamentals of programming.

It was after my course in COBOL that I stumbled into C++ which was the first language which we could actually use the nonsensical object-oriented stuff that some of the professors were jabbering on about. Of course, from there on out, it was all about the objects. PASCAL and COBOL disappeared from the university's curriculum replaced by JAVA and C/C++.

Not really surprising, it happened on campuses across the nation. But what is surprising is this blog entry by Microsoft's Wes Dyer. In it Mr. Dyer advocates the return of functional logic to programming - and makes a good case for it. One has to wonder when folks will realize that we need both paradigms to create truly wonderful code.