John Hughes on Why Functional Programming Matters

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37 points·fogus··7 comments

Here's a link to a readable transcript: http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0ATkBKEXbo6n8ZGdrNzhoM2dfNT...

if you've read Hughes' papers before, it's worth listening to the interview. Brings in his personality in a way that isn't conveyed well via the transcript.

Link to a downloadable/non-404 version of Hughes' paper:

http://academic.research.microsoft.com/Paper/702256.aspx

Two pdf links below the summary paragraph.

I lol'd when he made the jib "this is our great new language; it can't do assignments! ".

That's exactly how I felt when I first started with FP.

I know it's difficult to interview people on these complex topics but is Sadek Drobi really the best they can do?

I agree. That guy gets to interview so many cool people and he does such a piss poor job at it. His other interviews are just awful. I think he asks generic questions and he doesn't seem to have followed the authors work. The only thing that saves him is that most of the interviewees are pretty interesting.

Well maybe the fact that I am choosing cool people to interview means I follow what they are doing. Can you be constructive and tell me where do you draw your conclusion from? Keep in mind that I am interviewing for a wide variety of audience, and that I can't all of a sudden ask about technical details of using Arrows for parsers. If you get some bits of interest out of the interview then this means that I did my job well, since you are not my only target audience.

I guess I better off doing these interviews since all what I get from it is these arrogant destructive comments. Thank you

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