Haskell: origins, evolution, and future | Peyton Jones | JuliaCon Global 2026

Simon Peyton Jones discusses the history of Haskell, its contributions to programming language research, and its evolution for production use.

Haskell: origins, evolution, and future by Simon Peyton Jones PreTalx: pretalx.com/juliacon-2026/talk/QWW3TE/ Haskell is an unusual survivor in the Darwinian landscape of programming languages: it is long-lived (36 years old), yet not mainstream; it is both a research platform and a production tool; it pushes the boundaries of what you can do with static types; and (anecdotally) it inspires joy as well as offering utility. In this talk I'll describe how Haskell came to be, and what (in retrospect) I think are its most important contributions. I'll talk about how it has evolved, especially in response to the demands of companies using Haskell in production.