Lambda the Ultimate

Nothing really new for the LtU audience in this interview with the Pragmatic Programmers, but it is interesting to read their views on programming language. This quote is nice, even if you aren't a Lisp fan:

Ultimately, it comes down to ease of expression. If I can express myself in code at a level closer to the problem domain, then I'm going to be more effective, and my code is likely to be easier to maintain and extend. Paul Graham makes a big deal out of the way Lisp helped him while building the software that became Yahoo Stores, and he's right. These languages, applied properly, are a strategic advantage. I know some companies are using them with great success. And you know -- they're keeping quiet about it.

They also have an interesting take on the publishing industry, which certainly in academic circles is having a harder time justifying its existence.

Warning: This gathering is not for the faint of heart...

A user manual and a technical paper are available.

Reading the paper requires some knowledge of machine learning. The user manual cum tutorial is much more accessible.

It can be found via the FAQ link on the left.

I would like to remind you of MOZ 2004, the Mozart/Oz conference, whose submission deadline is coming up quickly (normally July 9, but due to several requests we will probably extend it by one week). The conference will be held on October 7-8 in Charleroi, Belgium. Highly recommended if you want to get the latest scoop on what is going on in the Mozart/Oz community. Many Mozart researchers and developers will attend too, and we expect lots of animated discussions. We'll also have two very interesting invited speakers, Gert Smolka and Mark Miller.

Another point that might interest people is that we've put a full set of lecture slides (more than 1000) on the CTM Web site (click on Supplements). The slides were made by Christian Schulte and Seif Haridi. The course is rather nontraditional. It might even be viewed as heretical in some quarters (we dare introduce concurrency before state, and we don't even mention inheritance). But we think it's a good way to start learning programming. The lecture slides only cover one third of the book, though, so if you want to see the other two thirds you'll have to get the book.

(The cameras seem to be following Anders around these days).

Anders answers questions from Tech-Ed audience about C# design decisions and possible future directions of the language. A number of subjects are discussed, including AOP, multiple inheritance, closures, guaranteed dispose, etc...

I'm about 30 minutes into the hour and a half video. Quite interesting from a PL perspective. I'll enter my notes into the comments section as time permits.

It's interesting to see how Ada that once influenced C++, Java and eventually C# (e.g., generics, strong typing) is now being influenced by them (e.g., interfaces, container library, integration of tasking and inheritance).

As I've said here before, the Ada design process is quite interesting, seeing as most Ada users are quite conservative -- due to the fact thar they are building mission critical software -- while the language designers try to move the language forward without alienating its user base.

I am not sure whether the most reasonable conclusion from this thread isn't to not choose lazy languages. I don't think it's simply a problem of lack of tools. Debugging lazy code is iherently problematic.

True, this isn't about programming languages per se, but still an important work that some of you may want to check out.

Software model checking is hard, but it is still a promising line of research.

Tools are generally influenced by the type of languages they model. On top of that, I am sure software model checking is going to influence language design and implementation.