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                    Seminar Announcement

            Department of Computer Science, FEIT
             The Australian National University
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Date:  Wednesday, 11 May 2005
Time:  4:00 pm to 5:00 pm
Venue: Room N101, CSIT Building [108]


Speaker:  Ben Lippmeier (DCS at ANU)

Title:   Purity vs Effects

Abstract:
     In the land of functional programming a bitter war wages between
the ideals of purity and the temptation of side effects. On one hand,
the banishment of effects from a pure language makes programs easier to
reason about, permits safe lazy evaluation and accommodates a host of
clever compiler optimisations. On the other hand, side effects are
required to write efficient programs and for interaction with the
outside world.

In this talk I will present an overview of this war and introduce my own
line of research - by analysing which expressions exhibit side effects
and which are guaranteed to be pure, we can allow conflicting features
such as laziness and destructive update to exist peacefully in the same
language.

Biography:
    Ben Lippmeier holds a BE (Electronics & Communications Engineering)
& a BS (Math, CompSci) from the University of Canberra. He spent two years
working for the Department of Defence and is now a PhD student in DCS.
His interests include dragging functional programming into the harsh
light of day.

URL: http://cs.anu.edu.au/lib/seminars/seminars05/dept20050511

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