There are few fields in computer science where the gap between the state of the art in academia and the technologies actually being used in industry appears to be larger than with programming languages. In many cases it has taken several decades before ideas well-established in PL research have found their way into the mainstream. Some have yet to make it. On the other hand, there are certain areas were industry is well ahead of the game, and academic research has difficulties keeping up. Having travelled between both academia and industry, I have observed this divide from both sides. In this talk, I will muse a bit about the reasons I have seen for it and report on my (successful and failed) attempts of bridging this gap.