Last week I had the opportunity to talk with Alonzo Church, Jr. (he prefers to be called “Al”), son of the Alonzo Church (you know, the one who only invented the freaking lambda calculus). We had a lovely conversation; we talked about Alan Turing, Fortran, COBOL, the future of computer science, and all sorts of other interesting topics. The highlight of our conversation, though, was this:
Me: “So, I’m learning a new-ish programming language named Haskell right now. It’s very strange.”
Al: “Did you say Pascal?”
Me: “No, Haskell. It’s named after a logicial named Haskell Curry –”
Al: “Oh, Professor Curry! Yes, I knew him! My father worked with him!”
Me: “No way! That’s awesome!”
Al: “Yes! In fact, I dated his daughter!”
Me: “You DOG!”