Lambda the Ultimate

Erik Meijer is a technical lead in the WebData group at Microsoft where he works on various topics including language and type-systems for data integration in programming languages. Prior to joining Microsoft he was an associate professor at Utrecht University and adjunct professor at the Oregon Graduate Institute. Erik is one of the designers of the standard functional programming language Haskell98. He is the author of the classic paper Bananas and Lenses, or as he puts it, he is the one guilty of inflicting concepts like anamorphisms and hylomorphism upon poor (functional) programmers.

Erik's blog is mentioned frequently on lambda and since the gotdotnet blog space is being phased out, it seems an nice idea to offer Erik a temporary blogging home here until he has set up a more permanent venue. He is, of course, welcome to stay for as long as he wants.

I am sure Erik has things to say regarding most of the issues regularly discussed here. Personally, I hope to hear from him about several issues.

First, I'd love to hear some first hand experience on doing language design in industry, and on moving from academia to an industrial research setting.

Second, Erik is on the front lines of adding XML support to programming languages. I am interested in his views on this design space and future research plans.

Last, and not least, anything categorical has a large following around here, so maybe Erik will oblige and write a bit about this subject as well...

I want to thank Erik for agreeing to guest blog, and will now let him introduce whatever topics he wants to discuss.

Posted to Guest Bloggers by Ehud Lamm on 1/8/04; 12:48:17 AM