Functional programming is said by some to relate to beautiful, unchanging things: pristine functions, immutable data. Put these notions on a pedestal, examine them from a distance, and they seem intimidating and disconnected from the mundane concerns of shipping code. Making stuff work, maintaining focus through distractions, triaging bugs, pricing the next rack of servers: every one of these demands time, be it in the form of late nights, wasted CPU cycles, or frustrated customers.

How can we connect these two worlds, the functional and the gritty? Modern functional languages offer an array of practical -- and often beautiful -- approaches to all of these problems. In this talk, I'll introduce some of the technologies pioneered in the Haskell community to streamline software development and reduce operational costs, all while banging out beautiful code. These techniques are not yet widespread, but a new generation of companies is choosing Haskell and reaping the benefits.