Erik Meijer, Gilad Bracha, Mads Torgersen: Perspectives on Programming Language Design and Evolution

Posted By: Charles | Feb 5th @ 11:52 AM

I attended Lang.NET 2008 and, as expected, learned a great deal from some of the industry's finest language and compiler minds. One of the most interesting talks was Gilad Bracha's session on his new programming language, Newspeak. Newspeak is really compelling from a language design perspective because of its pluggable type system (everything in Newspeak is virtual). His talk was really deep and targeted at his fellow language designers, but it's all starting to make sense to me now (takes a while to sink into my thick skull).

Erik Meijer, our resident programming language guru and a deacon in the Church of the Lamda Calculus ( Smiley ), was of course in attendance and presented on the current state of Volta (an excellent managed tier-splitting technology that you should definitely play with).

Mads Torgersen, Danish computer scientist and member of the C# design team, was also in attendance. It's always fun to chat with Mads. He's got a very well balanced and insightful perspective on pragmatic programming language design. We're lucky to have him working with Anders et al on the evolution of C#.

I thought it would be a great idea to get these three characters together in one place to talk about what they know best: programming languages. We have a great discussion on type systems, programming language history, DLR and language futures.

If you are into programming language design, then this is for you. There is no white boarding, but the conversation is deep given the topics covered... It's also a really fun interview with exceptional personalities. We laugh a lot, which is always a good thing. So, step outside of the box, settle into a comfy chair (this is a long one - unedited as usual) and get some new perspectives on programming language design and evolution from some of the top minds in the industry.

Enjoy!

Lo-Res version for the bandwidth challanged.

Tags: Compilers, Computing, Erik Meijer, Functional Programming, LangNET 2008, Programming, Software Composability

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aL_

cool Smiley too bad gilad has to be so gosh darned arrogant.. Tongue Out everything he didnt make seems to suck/be evil/sick and every one who doesnt agree with him he seems to think is an idiot:P he has alot of valid points but i just dont think the world is that black and white..

but hey.. thats just my impression Smiley awsome interview

Charles

aL_ wrote:

cool too bad gilad has to be so gosh darned arrogant.. everything he didnt make seems to suck/be evil/sick and every one who doesnt agree with him he seems to think is an idiot he has alot of valid points but i just dont think the world is that black and white..

but hey.. thats just my impression awsome interview

Gilad has a complex sense of humor. Smiley

Glad you enjoyed the conversation. I know I did!
C

JChung2006

Great video! I have been debating the pros and cons of reflective programming with somebody in the Techoff threads who is adamantly against it, and many of the points I would have liked to have made in favor of dynamic languages and better type systems were made here in this video and in a more eloquent manner. Keep up the good talks, Charles!

aL_

Charles wrote:

Gilad has a complex sense of humor.

indeed

are there any more lang.net vids coming up btw?

gaurav.net

Thx Charles for awesome interviews, its so Nice to hear such kind of talks on programming languages...and the future...

I hope we have some more from Lang.NET 2008..

Big Cheers...

Leather

I have to agree... I found this talk interesting but Gilad comes across as very arrogant. He seems to think that most developers don't want to learn anything. If that were the case no one would be watching this video.

I think perhaps working in an academic scenario for a long time causes people to lose appreciation for people working against commercial pressures. Most developers I have worked with are very keen to learn new languages/technologies but in reality they have deadlines to meet. In addition it takes time for these things to gain acceptance at the corporate level.

His comments about older people's inability to learn are also out of line.

It's a shame really; I feel these comments tarnished an otherwise very interesting discussion.

Chadk

If the session Gilad held on newspeak is the same as he did on Jaoo, thats some extremely crazy stuff.

Good interview. I disagree with the people who say that Gilad comes out arrogant.

Charles

I have more from Lang.NET in the pipeline. Stay tuned. Wink

Chadk

Charles wrote:

I have more from Lang.NET in the pipeline. Stay tuned.
C

Is there gonna be more with Mads? He seems extremely cool, but he didnt get to say all that much compared to Erik and Gilad in this interview, which is a shame.