language learning

A short clip of Simon Peyton Jones talking about the future of programming languages, saying Haskell is useless in the sense that pure programs cannot have effects, while mainstream languages are useful but unsafe. He describes languages converging, with ideas such as STM and LINQ moving between them.

Freeman Dyson recounts how Enrico Fermi rejected his team's meson scattering model, noting that it had too many free parameters. It is the source of the quote about fitting an elephant.