Simon Thompson
Functional programmer in Haskell and Erlang, researcher and teacher of computer science @ University of Kent
Researcher, author and teacher, based at the University of Kent. My research has covered many aspects of functional programming, including verification, tool building and testing for Erlang, Haskell and OCaml. I'm author of books on type theory, Haskell and Erlang, and run a MOOC on Erlang for FutureLearn.
Past Activities
Code Mesh LDN
14.30 - 15.15
Marlowe: financial contracts on blockchain
Marlowe is a high-level, domain-specific language (DSL) for writing financial contracts on blockchain. Marlowe is defined by an executable semantics in Haskell, and has been implemented on the UTxO-based Cardano blockchain.
This talk will introduce Marlowe and describe its semantics, implementation and tooling as well as give examples, including some from the ACTUS financial standard. It will also address Marlowe as a Haskell DSL, and describe the choices made in designing and revising the language.
THIS TALK IN THREE WORDS
Blockchain
Functional
DSL
OBJECTIVES
To describe the design - and design tradeoffs - in building a functional DSL to work on blockchain to describe and enforce a wide class of functional contracts.
TARGET AUDIENCE
Programmers interested in DSL design, and others interested in financial smart contracts on blockchain,
Code BEAM STO 2018
13.50 - 14.35
Making It Lazy: never evaluate anything more than once
Put some more advanced features of Erlang to work by implementing lazy evaluation. First we find a way of being non-strict, so we only evaluate things by need, and then we find a way of memoising the results. We show how to build infinite, graphical and indeed cyclic data structures, using higher-order functions, macros and ETS tables.
OBJECTIVES
Learn some advanced functional programming techniques and see how they can be implemented in Erlang.
AUDIENCE
Anyone who would like to learn some neat functional programming tricks to use in Erlang or Elixir.
Code BEAM STO 2018
17.45 - 18.30
Panel discussion on the trends in research
Some of the earliest Erlang adopters were Universities, using the language semantics to teach aspects of computer science. This resulted in research projects and collaboration focusing on type systems, tooling, static analysis, property based testing, all overlapping with classic themes such as VM enhancements, concurrency, distribution, scalability, reliability and multi-core. Whilst lots has been achieved, the challenges faced by the software industry keeps on evolving, as does the hardware and infrastructure they run our systems on. In this panel, Torben Hoffmann will be leading a discussion on how the Industry and Universities can work together to keep research thriving, accessible, cutting edge and relevant.
Code BEAM SF 2018
14.30 - 15.15
Making It Lazy: never evaluate anything more than once
Put some more advanced features of Erlang to work by implementing lazy evaluation. First we find a way of being non-strict, so we only evaluate things by need, and then we find a way of memoising the results. We show how to build infinite, graphical and indeed cyclic data structures, using higher-order functions, macros and ETS tables.
OBJECTIVES
Learn some advanced functional programming techniques and see how they can be implemented in Erlang.
AUDIENCE
Anyone who would like to learn some neat functional programming tricks to use in Erlang or Elixir.