Types in programming languages are commonly thought of as a way of preventing certain bad things from happening, such as multiplying a number by a string. But this is only half of the benefit of types: it is what types are against. Types in programming languages are also what enable some good...

In this presentation, Uday brings together two strands of Christopher Strachey’s thought: parametric polymorphism and abstract models of storage. The term parametric polymorphism was introduced in by Strachey who distinguished it from “ad hoc” polymorphism. In the words of John Reynolds, “a...

Hongseok begins by talking about a program of Strachey’s that wrote “love letters” using the Manchester University computer. He then uses this as a lead in for discussing probabilistic methods of generating algorithms and programs.