To be fair, I once fixed a java application that completely crashed due to using string concatenation for data export, rather than a StringBuffer. It does matter sometimes even in workaday applications.
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teyfille
Yes, that is altar upon which you sacrifice the abilitity to write print statements to do debugging, and lose the ability to reason about order of execution. But does it really result in more performant code? Every benchmark I've ever seen, more practical languages like Ocaml have come out on top.
Haskell's rhetoric has always seemed a bit Pharisaical to me: "Though the runtime is impure, Our Code is uncontaminated by the taint of side effects".
It's first to market?
Whenever I see a news article that mentions that automated alerts were ignored, I wonder how many false positives that piece of software produces. My own brief career as a sysadmin taught to loath, dread and distrust automated alerts.
For good or for ill, erroneous alerts are treated like the boy who cried wolf. Errors are indicative of moral failings and evil intent on the software's part.