Simon Peyton Jones on Programming Languages and Research Work
In QCon London 2008, I had the opportunity to have an interview with one of my heros: Simon Peyton Jones. Simon has an enormous capacity of making the answer to almost any question precise and clear no matter how abstract the subject is. I Strongly recommend that you have a look at this interview if you are interested in programming languages in general. Following Simon’s talks and interviews requires almost no prior knowledge about functional programming or Haskell.
In this interview, computer scientist and researcher Simon Peyton Jones discusses properties of functional programming languages, and particularly Haskell, that have inspired some features in mainstream languages. He gives his opinion on the issues of syntax and language complexity and talks about some research work on subjects such as Data parallelism and transactional memory.
Bio
Honorary Professor of Computer Science at the University of Glasgow, Simon Peyton Jones currently works at Microsoft Research in Cambridge. He has led several research projects focused on the implementation and applications of functional programming languages. He has greatly contributed to the design of the Haskell language, and is the lead designer of the Glasgow Haskell Compiler.
Access this exclusive interview published at InfoQ.com

