The Haskell Interlude

Episoade

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  86: Michael Hanus 11.09.2026 53min

  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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  85: Brent Yorgey 26.08.2026 59min

  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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  84: Sylvain Henry 29.06.2026 51min

  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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  83: POPL 2026 - Part 2 14.06.2026 44min

  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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  82: Fraser Tweedale 19.05.2026 48min

  We talked to Fraser Tweedale. Fraser works at Red Hat, and is on the Haskell Security Response Team. We talked about security in the context of Haskell, both technical and organizational issues, and also the political issues involved. Fraser's work is both really important and not well-known in the Haskell ecosystem, so it was high time for him to come on the show.
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  81: Torsten Grust 27.04.2026 1h 10min

  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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  80: POPL 2026 - Part 1 13.04.2026 42min

  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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  79: Peter Thiemann 22.03.2026 1h 6min

  Peter is a professor at the University of Freiburg, and he was doing functional programming right when Haskell got started. So naturally we asked him about the early days of Haskell, and how from the start Peter pushed the envelope on what you could do with the type system and specifically with the type classes, from early web programming to program generation to session types. Come with us on a trip down memory lane!
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  78: Jamie Willis 08.03.2026 43min

  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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  77: Franz Thoma 22.02.2026 57min

  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.
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  76: Jeffrey Young 25.01.2026 1h 4min

  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].
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  75: Kathrin Stark 11.01.2026 51min

  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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  74: Lennart Augustsson 19.12.2025 1h 20min

  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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  73: Jean-Philippe Bernardy 13.11.2025 38min

  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.
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  72: Manuel Chakravarty 30.10.2025 57min

  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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  71: Stefan Wehr 16.10.2025 49min

  Stefan Wehr is a professor at the Offenburg University of Applied Sciences. Before becoming a professor, Stefan worked in industry on a large Haskell codebase - specifically one that's not a compiler and not a blockchain. So of course we talked about using Haskell in large projects, software architecture, modularity, type classes and data modeling and the suppression of sums outside of functional programming, and also about teaching Haskell at his current job.
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  70: Phil Wadler 14.09.2025 1h 1min

  We sat down with Phil Wadler, one of the most influential folks in the Haskell community, functional programming, and programming languages, responsible for type classes, monads, and much more. We take a stroll down memory lane, starting from Haskell's inception. We talked about the difference between research and Phil's work on impactful industrial projects and standards - specifically XML and the design of generics in Java, as well as Phll's teaching at the University of Edinburgh using Agd...
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  69: Jurriaan Hage 25.08.2025 52min

  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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  68: Michael Snoyman 12.08.2025 54min

  In this episode, we’re joined by Michael Snoyman, author of Yesod, Conduit, Stackage and many other popular Haskell libraries. We discuss newcomer friendliness, being a Rustacean vs a Haskellasaur, how STM is Haskell’s best feature and how laziness can be a vice.
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  67: Alex McLean 07.07.2025 57min

  Mike and Andres speak to Alex McLean who created the TidalCycles system for electronic music - implemented in Haskell of course. We talk about how Alex got into Haskell coming from Perl, how types helped him think about the structure of music and patterns, the architecture and evolution of TidalCycles, about art, community and making space for new ideas, and lots of things in between.