Daily Life in an Ivory Basement

Laurie Dillon just posted the SIGPLAN eduction board article on Why Undergraduates Should Learn the Principles of Programming Languages to our faculty mailing list at the MSU Computer Science department. One question that came up in the ensuing conversation was: what functional programming language(s) would/should we teach?

I mentioned OCaml, Haskell, and Erlang as reasonably pure but still pragmatic FP languages. Anything else that's both "truly" functional and used somewhat broadly in the real world?

thanks!

--titus

Just got news that the BEACON NSF Science and Technology Center for the study of Evolution in Action funded Chris Adami to come do a sabbatical here at Michigan State University for the next year. This puts me, Chris, and Charles Ofria at the same institution (now MSU, then Caltech) for the first time since 1993, other than a brief overlap in ~2000. 1993 was when we designed and implemented Avida. (Avida must be one of the most long-lived summer research projects ever...)

Should I be upset that Charles and Chris both have Wikipedia pages, and Charles is an Associate Professor and Chris a full Professor, while I am only a lowly Assistant Prof, even though I'm only a year younger than Charles? Naah -- I don't have any grey hair yet. I'll take the trade... ;)

The "family" has also grown. We are all married, 2 of us have kids, and we all have a bunch of students and postdocs, too. It's gettin' crowded around here: should be fun!

--titus

I'd like to find an MSU student to report semi-monthly on python-dev. The student would be responsible for monitoring the python-dev mailing list and active PEPs, summarizing substantive discussions in a public forum, and integrating feedback from the community. This would be a 1 credit CSE independent study course (CSE 490). Additional effort (for more credits) could be applied towards building and maintaining a CMS site to store and reference past and present summaries, or integrating reviews of new modules.

The ideal student would be someone who communicates well in writing, is interested in technical reporting, and has some basic experience with programming. Python experience (CSE 231) is a plus.

Please send a brief summary of interests together with a sample of writing to ctb@msu.edu.

--titus

I'd like to invite you to attend the last of the Michigan State University CSE colloquia for the 2008-2009 academic year: jointly sponsored as an AT&T Visiting Lecturer by the MSU LCT, and the CSE department, Sam Ramji will speak about

Open Source at Microsoft: The Past, Present and Future

in CommArts room 147, Friday May 1, at 11:00am. I encourage you all to attend and to forward this on to others who might be interested! As you know, open source software is playing an increasingly big part in education, academia, science, and business, and so I expect this to be a very interesting talk.

Contact me at ctb@msu.edu for further information.

--

Abstract:

Since Microsoft established its Open Source Lab in Redmond more than five years ago, it has worked with many open source players to make Windows the best platform for all applications to run on. But this has not been without its challenges and there is a lot more work to be done on this front. This talk will cover the thinking behind Microsoft's current open source strategy and what this means for the software engineers of the future. It will also spotlight some innovative Open Source projects the company is supporting at universities across the world.

Biography:

Sam Ramji is the Senior Director of Platform Strategy leading Microsoft's platform strategy efforts across the company, including long-term strategic planning in the Windows Server and Tools organization. Sam's primary focus is to drive Microsoft's Linux and Open Source Strategy, working together with Microsoft technology development teams and open source communities to build interoperable solutions.

Prior to his current role at Microsoft, Sam was a Director of Emerging Business working on the Silicon Valley Campus where he managed relationships with Venture Capitalists and entrepreneurs. Prior to joining Microsoft, Sam led technical product strategy at BEA Systems, engineering teams building large-scale applications on Open Source software (at Ofoto.com) as well as hands-on development of client, client-server, and distributed applications on Unix, Windows, and Macintosh at prior companies.

Sam holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Cognitive Science from the University of California at San Diego, and is a member of the Institute for Generative Leadership.

On Thursday, May 15th, I finished my post-doc position at Caltech.

On Friday, May 16th, I officially started as an Assistant Professor split between Computer Science & Engineering and Microbiology & Molecular Genetics at Michigan State University.

On Friday evening and Saturday, we hung out down at the Caltech Marine Lab and partied.

As I type, I'm on a plane flying from California to Michigan, where my cat and I will spend our first night in our new house.

My wife and daughter will join me on Wednesday.

All of our stuff is en route and will arrive later in the week.

On Monday, I will start "directing" my new lab: I already have several local summer students, as well as a part-time research assistant. Two graduate students and a postdoctoral fellow will be starting with me later in the summer.

Hooray!

--titus