PLNews: Programming Language News

eWEEK is running an interview with Jim Hugunin and John Lam about Microsoft's new Dynamic Language Runtime.

The interview covers topics such as: the origins and development of the DLR, its capabilities and benefits, IronPython, developing a Ruby implementation on top of the DLR, performance considerations, and more.

It has been announced that a video interview with Anders Hejlsberg, Herb Sutter, Erik Meijer, and Brian Beckman entitled "Software Composability and the Future of Languages" is now available online.

The "Introduction to F#, Part 2" video interview with F# creator Don Syme is now available. F# is a variant of ML running on .NET, sharing a core language with Objective Caml.

A video interview with F# creator Don Syme is now available. F# is a variant of ML running on .NET, sharing a core language with Objective Caml.

An interview with Victoria Livschitz, of Sun Microsystems, discussing her envisioned Metaphors programming language is now available.

Metaphors aims to help alleviate the difficulties associated with developing complex software systems using existing languages. She suggests a system of "distributed runtime cores", and "local virtual machines" which act as containers for managed application code. She also proposes "core system-level constructs built into the language, designed to make the task of the formal codification of systems a far more intuitive process, as compared to programming in object-oriented languages." Reuse mechanisms, such as composition, derivation, and adaptation, should also be directly supported by the language.

She states, "If programmers naturally think in terms of metaphors and recursively build higher-level metaphors from lower-level ones, then that should be the model for the software creation process supported by the programming language. Eventually, I hope to facilitate a style of software development in which one can say, in a programming statement, "The contextual model of this application is just like a contextual model of that application, except..." and then define exactly how the two are different."

The second part of John Osborn's interview with C# architect Anders Hejlsberg is now available. The first part of the interview was made available on October 17, 2005.

This part of the interview discusses LINQ, comparing it with technologies for embedding SQL within various programming languages. There is some focus on the functional programming capabilities making their way into C#, as well as some discussion regarding upcoming developments. Hejlsberg also suggests that developers take advantage of the C# 2.0 generics and stronger typing, in addition to looking at the 3.0 previews.

ONDotnet.com is running an interview with Anders Hejlsberg, the chief architect of C#.

It starts by discussing C#-related developments over the past five years, including the effect of C# and .NET on Java usage, as well as the C# standardization efforts. There is also some discussion regarding the first-class treatment of properties, events, and methods in C#, plus some discussion about LINQ. Hejlsberg talks about C# generics, and how they compare with Java generics and C++ templates. Anonymous methods, nullable types, and other upcoming developments are also mentioned.

perl.com is running an interview with Autrijus Tang which includes a section focusing on Haskell. Autrijus Tang is a developer and founder of the Pugs project, a Perl 6 implementation written in Haskell.

Included is discussion concerning the benefits of Haskell, a short code example, and a description of the Haskell community.