Lambda the Ultimate

Blog post on HN. Only the intro is related to PL:

I’m trying to get into neural networks. There have been a couple big breakthroughs in the field in recent years and suddenly my side project of messing around with programming languages seemed short sighted. It almost seems like we’ll have real AI soon and I want to be working on that. While making my first couple steps into the field it’s hard to keep that enthusiasm. A lot of the field is still kinda handwavy where when you want to find out why something is used the way it’s used, the only answer you can get is “because it works like this and it doesn’t work if we change it.”

Putting my ear to the ground, competition from ML has become more and more common not just in PL, but also in systems, I know many researchers who are re-purposing their skills right now while it has become more difficult to find grad students/interns.

So, is this something we should be worried about? What could happen to make PL more competitive in terms of exciting results/mindshare?