Episode 108: Simon Peyton Jones on Functional Programming and Haskell

We start our discussion with a brief look at what Haskell is and
how a pure functional language is different from non-pure
languages. We then look at the basic building blocks and the
philosophy of the language, discussing concepts such as the lambda
calculus, closures, currying, immutability, lazy evaluation,
memoization, and the role of data types in functional languages. A
significant part of the discussion is then spent on the management
of side effects in a pure language - in other words, the importance
of monads. We conclude the episode with a look at Haskell's
importance and community today.