[nv-vn]

>For whatever reason, papers ... that ... use data to make arguments about productivity, safety, etc. always seem unconvincing to me. ... maybe it's just because the way most programmers write code doesn't matter to me, because most programmers aren't aware of what is possible on the frontier.

As someone involved in PL research I partially agree, but I think this effect happens in both directions. There are plenty of great ideas in PL that haven't been applied to real problems whereas, simultaneously, there are plenty of huge problems for programmers where PL hasn't been applied. That is to say, us researchers often ignore the problems of the masses in favor of ones with more elegant (or more rigorous) solutions because we enjoy writing fancy proofs and theory more than we enjoy pragmatism. I think both sides of the equation are very important here, but it would be great to see some more direct interaction between the two sides. As it stands, a conference like POPL contributes about as much to recreational math as it does to the state of the art in programming.