The Haskell Interlude

Franz Thoma is Principal Consultant at TNG Technology Consulting, and an organizer of MuniHac. Franz sees functional programming and Haskell as a tool for thinking about software, even if the project is not written in Haskell. We had a far-reaching conversation about the differences between functional and object-oriented programming and their languages, software architecture, and Haskell adoption in industry.

Welcome to the Haskell Interlude. Today, Matti and Mike talk to
Jeffrey Young. Jeff has had a long history of working with Haskell and
on ghc itself. We talk about what makes Haskell so compelling, the
good and bad of highly optimized code and the beauty of
well-modularized code, how to get into compiler development, and how
to benefit from Domain-Driven Design.

Jeff is currently on the job market - if you want to get in touch,
email him at mailto:[email protected].

We are joined by Kathrin Stark, a professor at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh. Kathrin works on program verification with proof assistants, so her focus is not exactly on Haskell, but on topics dear to Haskellers' hearts such as interactive theorem provers, writing correct programs, and the activities needed to produce them. We discuss many aspects of proofs and specifications, and the languages involved in the process, as well as verifying and producing provably correct neural networks.

This episode is a deep dive into the evolution of Haskell and functional programming with one of its pioneers, Lennart Augustson. It  reflects on decades of work in language design and compiler implementation. Lennart speaks about his early involvement in the creation of Haskell, shares thoughts on type systems, performance, and the balance between purity and practicality. The conversation ranges from personal history to big-picture views on the evolution of programming languages, with plenty of insight into what makes Haskell both powerful and challenging. A rare opportunity to hear from one of the foundational voices in the functional programming world.

In this Interlude, we’re joined by Jean-Philipe Bernardy, a Senior Lecturer at University of Gothenburg and Chalmers University of Technology. We discuss letting types be your guide, getting into AI to feed yourself, and never testing your programs.