I don't see this arrogance you claim. My reading of the paper is completely different. Nowhere do I see this attitude of "everyone else is an idiot"; the author is just stating the fact that the other participants weren't familiar with FP techniques. This is not insulting, it's a statement of fact. It was also not unexpected in 1994.
The author singles out the use of higher-order functions as an elegant technique of which the other participants weren't aware, even though some of their languages actually supported it! This technique is precisely what another participant considered "too cute for its own good" -- even though today we know higher-order functions are hugely useful and relatively mainstream, enough that few devs would find them surprising. Another objection was that they couldn't believe the Haskell prototype was a finished executable program and not a top-level design document mixed with some pseudocode... which speaks a lot in Haskell's favor!
To me, Paul Hudak actually sounds humble in his paper. He acknowledges the limitations of the experiment, he is careful not to say this "proves" anything, but is enthusiastic about what it suggests, i.e. that Haskell can be used for rapid prototyping with great success! I'd say this is an uncontroversial conclusion.
It's unfortunate that you cannot back the claim that the Haskell solutions were disqualified. It certainly contradicts the paper, which shows the final scorecard by the review panel...
The author singles out the use of higher-order functions as an elegant technique of which the other participants weren't aware, even though some of their languages actually supported it! This technique is precisely what another participant considered "too cute for its own good" -- even though today we know higher-order functions are hugely useful and relatively mainstream, enough that few devs would find them surprising. Another objection was that they couldn't believe the Haskell prototype was a finished executable program and not a top-level design document mixed with some pseudocode... which speaks a lot in Haskell's favor!
To me, Paul Hudak actually sounds humble in his paper. He acknowledges the limitations of the experiment, he is careful not to say this "proves" anything, but is enthusiastic about what it suggests, i.e. that Haskell can be used for rapid prototyping with great success! I'd say this is an uncontroversial conclusion.
It's unfortunate that you cannot back the claim that the Haskell solutions were disqualified. It certainly contradicts the paper, which shows the final scorecard by the review panel...