Research languages and the mainstream

Erik Meijer: "I really hope that there will be much more influence of [Microsoft's research] languages to other areas, in particular databases. There's a lot of very interesting theory about using monads or monoids as the basis for query languages instead of relational algebra [the basis for SQL]. Query comprehensions in LINQ are just the first step -- the tip of the iceberg."

One of the things that excites me about C# 3.0 and Visual Basic 9 is their rapid adoption of ideas and techniques from research languages such as F# and C-omega/X#, only a few years after these languages were conceived. Admittedly many of these ideas have a longer pedigree (F# specifically being a ML dialect, not to mention the influence of Haskell/Mondrian), but if this year's mainstream is embracing the research of 3-5 years ago, then perhaps next year's mainstream will see languages like Spec# (DBC) and Polyphonic C# (concurrency, surely the hot topic du jour) making their mark. It will be interesting to see what the Linq designers have in mind beyond the current SQL-style approach, an approach which is horribly stretched by XML queries and will be stretched yet further by other more exotic domains such as the ones Alex discusses.

One of the things that excites me a bit less is that despite having studied category theory at college (and picked it up again recently) and having read that damn Haskell book time and again, I still haven't managed to get my head around monads. Still, if Meijer is going to put them into Visual Basic, I'm optimistic that I'll be able to make sense of them then.

Bonus Meijer quote: "Functional programming has finally reached the masses, except that it is called Visual Basic instead of Lisp, ML, or Haskell." From the wonderfully named Confessions of a Used Programming Language Salesman.