The Haskell Interlude

62:29

87: Edward Kmett

The Haskell Interlude ·

2026/10/02

For the new Haskell Interlude, we sat down with Edward Kmett. Ed is the Founder and Chief Scientist of Positron AI. More importantly, he's a legend in the Haskell community for authoring many, many popular Haskell packages, first and foremost lens - and generally turning up the abstraction level to 11. We talk about design principles for Haskell libraries, category theory, cache-oblivious algorithms and his current work involving Haskell, C++, and FPGAs. Ed talks fast, so strap in!

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53:59

86: Michael Hanus

The Haskell Interlude ·

2026/09/11

In this episode, we sat down with Michael Hanus. Michael is a professor at the University of Kiel and is one of the founders of functional logic programming, the combination of logic and functional programming in a single formalism. Michael is also the creator of Curry, a functional-logic language that resembles Haskell, so you can dive right in if you're familiar with Haskell. Naturally, we talked about what functional logic programming is, how it improves over plain functional programming,

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59:47

85: Brent Yorgey

The Haskell Interlude ·

2026/08/26

In today’s episode, we’re joined by Brent Yorgey, Associate Professor of Computer Science at Hendrix College and the creator, among other things, of the Diagrams vector graphics library and Swarm, a 2D programming and resource gathering game. We talk about teaching, domain specific languages, and competitive coding.Episode links and transcript

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51:35

84: Sylvain Henry

The Haskell Interlude ·

2026/06/29

In this episode of the Haskell Interlude, we are joined by Sylvain Henry, one of the all-time top contributors to GHC. He tells us about his work on GHC, the bignum library, modularization, and the secret to becoming a top contributor!

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44:53

83: POPL 2026 - Part 2

The Haskell Interlude ·

2026/06/14

This is the first part of a miniseries on this year’s Symposium on Principles of Programming Languages, a.k.a. POPL 2026, hosted by Jessica Foster. In this episode we talk about: symbolic execution monads, what a lazy linear core in Haskell might have in common with Rust, hyperfunctions, the hallway track, and how to deal with rejection.

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70:44

81: Torsten Grust

The Haskell Interlude ·

2026/04/27

Mike and Andres sat down with Torsten Grust, who is a professor of DB systems at the University of Tübingen. Even though Torsten loves SQL, he's used functional programming and Haskell to inform his work on query language design and compilation. We talked about the best way to program databases, how to bridge the gap between regular programming languages and databases, and compiling just about everything to SQL.

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42:56

80: POPL 2026 - Part 1

The Haskell Interlude ·

2026/04/13

This is the first part of a miniseries on this year’s Symposium on Principles of Programming Languages, a.k.a. POPL 2026, hosted by Jessica Foster. In this episode, we talk about: undergrad funding and participation, the behind the scenes of AV, choreographic programming, quantum languages, conference catering, and the joy of theory. And at one point, you’ll even hear us get kicked out the venue mid interview. Enjoy!

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43:25

78: Jamie Willis

The Haskell Interlude ·

2026/03/08

In this episode, we focus on a particular part of Haskell: teaching it. To help us, we are joined by Jamie Willis who is a Teaching Fellow at Imperial College London. The episode explores the benefits of live coding, and why Haskell is the best language for teaching programming.

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64:12

76: Jeffrey Young

The Haskell Interlude ·

2026/01/25

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:jmy6342@gmail.com.

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51:17

75: Kathrin Stark

The Haskell Interlude ·

2026/01/11

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.

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80:53

74: Lennart Augustsson

The Haskell Interlude ·

2025/12/19

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 p...

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57:01

72: Manuel Chakravarty

The Haskell Interlude ·

2025/10/30

In this episode, we talk to Manuel Chakravarty - specifically, his work on the ghc backend such as data-parallel Haskell and the FFI and how that work segued into type system design. We also discussed Manuel's perspective on Haskell from the language design of Swift.

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52:44

69: Jurriaan Hage

The Haskell Interlude ·

2025/08/25

Today’s guest is Jurriaan Hage. Jurriaan is a professor at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh who’s worked with and on Haskell for many years. He’s known for the Helium Haskell compiler, specifically designed for teaching, and he has plenty of other projects related to Haskell, including improvements to the type system, the generation of better error messages, or detection of plagiarism.

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60:47

65: Andy Gordon

The Haskell Interlude ·

2025/05/30

Andy Gordon from Cogna is interviewed by Sam and Matti. We learn about Andy’s influential work including the origins of the bind symbol in haskell, and the introduction of lambdas in Excel. We go onto discuss his current work at Cogna on using AI to allow non-programmers to write apps using natural language. We delve deeper into the ethics of AI and consider the most likely AI apocalypse.

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49:25

64: Sandy Maguire

The Haskell Interlude ·

2025/04/23

In this episode Mike Sperber and Niki Vazou talk with Sandy Maguire, lead compiler engineer at Manifold Valley. They talk about the benefits of using Haskell of course, about all the books Sandy has written, on effects and the problem with monads, on combinator libraries and programming with laws.

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58:13

63: Farhad Mehta

The Haskell Interlude ·

2025/03/17

On this episode of the Haskell Interlude, Andres Löh and Mike Sperber are joined by Farhad Mehta, a professor at OST Rapperswil, and one of the organizers of ZuriHac. Fahrad tells us about formal methods, building tunnels, the importance of education, and the complicated relationship between academia and industry.

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57:56

62: Conal Elliott

The Haskell Interlude ·

2025/02/17

In this episode Wouter Swiestra and Niki Vazou talk with Conal Elliott. Conal discusses doing things just for the poetry, how most programs miss their purpose, and the simplest way to ask a question. Conal is currently working on a book about his ideas and actively looking for partners.

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57:38

61: Sam Lindley

The Haskell Interlude ·

2025/01/22

Sam Lindley is a Reader in Programming Languages Design and Implementation at the University of Edinburgh. In this episode, he tells us how difficult naming is, the different kinds of effect systems and handlers, languages *much* purer than Haskell, and Modal logic.

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48:52

60: Tom Ellis

The Haskell Interlude ·

2024/12/22

Tom Ellis works at Groq, using Haskell to compile AI models to specialized hardware. In this episode, we talk about stability of both GHC and Haskell libraries, effects, and strictness, and the premise of functional programming: make invalid states and invalid *laziness* unrepresentable!

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42:46

Episode 59: Harry Goldstein

The Haskell Interlude ·

2024/12/11

Sam and Wouter interview Harry Goldstein, a researcher in property-based testing who works in PL, SE, and HCI. In this episode, we reflect on random generators, the find-a-friend model, interdisciplinary research, and how to have impact beyond your own research community.

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