On Barbara Liskov's Power of Abstraction, Functional language and PCP

Barbara Liskov  OOPSLA keynote at InfoQ site is worth listening to. 

She is best known for formulating the Liskov Substitution Principle(LSP)

Her presentation is very clear and well-delivered.

She's is not convinced of functional programming and emphasized readability and hinted  that DSLs could introduced cacophony into the language landscape.

Managed yesterday to fire off an email to her about some concerns I have about Functional language. After all,  I have begin to dip into Clojure for a few weeks now.

I got a reply this morning.

The gist is that readability may not be an issue with Functional languages but it could be due to something else. I felt that something is not natural or right. Maybe its my time and familiarity with Object-Oriented language for long time?. Or is it a paradigm change?.

Could Functional language be walking down the metaphor road of the new Sorcerer's Apprentice?

"That old sorcerer has vanished
And for once has gone away!
Spirits called by him, now banished,
My commands shall soon obey.
Every step and saying
That he used, I know,
And with sprites obeying
My arts I will show"

I don't know but I hope  PCP ("praise, certainty and perfection") is not at work. 

Only time will tell. Meanwhile, I got a copy of "Programming F#" by Chris Smith and started to read it for comparison with Clojure.