Jonathan Aldrich on the design and evolution of programming languages

Jonathan Aldrich is a professor at Carnegie Mellon University and director of the software engineering Ph.D. program at Carnegie Mellon’s Institute for Software Research. Jonathan’s research focuses on software scalability. His work aims to improve software quality and programmer productivity through an interdisciplinary approach to software design. He has received the National Science Foundation career award and the Dahl-Nygaard prize.

In our conversation with Jonathan, we cover his journey into research and academia, the evolution of programming languages, characteristics of the ideal programming language, as well as ways to measure software quality. He calls for a multi-disciplinary approach to designing programming languages. Jonathan also shares his recent research in building programming languages for writing web, mobile and blockchain applications.

About and from Prof. Jonathan Aldrich:

• Website: https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~aldrich
• Institute for Software Research, faculty page: https://www.isri.cmu.edu/people/core-faculty/aldrich-jonathan.html
• Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=AzHmOtcAAAAJ&hl=en
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/jaldrichcmu

Research:

• Obsidian (domain-specific language for writing safer smart contracts on the blockchain and other platforms): http://obsidian-lang.com
• Wyvern (general-purpose language focused on security, modularity, and language extensibility): http://wyvernlang.github.io
• Penrose (language for visualizing mathematical objects): http://www.penrose.ink/
• Interdisciplinary Programming Language Design: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~aldrich/papers/onward2018-pldesign.pdf
• Design Intent: a Principled Approach to Application Security: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~aldrich/papers/cylab2009-slides.pdf
• Using Capability-Based Modules to Enforce Secure Resource Usage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYkAzbhVcpM

Assorted links:

• Institute for Software Research: https://www.isri.cmu.edu/
• Book Recommendation: Why we make mistakes by Joseph T. Hallinan: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/73874/why-we-make-mistakes-by-joseph-t-hallinan/9780767928069/

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Music:

• Music used in this podcast: Simplex Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com): Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0
• Chipper Doodle Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com): Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0

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