About

I’m Paul Snively. I’ve been writing software for about four decades, starting with a Model I TRS-80 I bought by selling a drum set I had bought with paper route money. I got into programming through gaming, which at the time meant the Scott Adams adventures and, later, Zork. This drove my interest in artificial intelligence, which drove my interest in Lisp, which drove my interest in programming languages. Because I’m a Hoosier, I was able to study computer science at Indiana University. Drs. Dan Friendman and Douglas Hofstadter were far more patient with my pestering than they needed to be, for which I’m very grateful. I’m privileged to have been able to work professionally in Scala for about the last decade, and to have done purely functional programming for about the last eight years. I’ve worked with Apple, VMware, Intel, and Verizon, among others.

Several friends and acquaintenances have made enormous contributions to the field of computer programming, and have generously acknowledged conversations we’ve had in their works:

• Programming Scala
• Delimited Control in OCaml, Abstractly and Concretely: System Description
• The Little Prover
• Paradigms of Artificial Intelligence Programming: Case Studies in Common Lisp

I’ve done some public speaking, mostly about type systems, type theory, and functional programming, but sometimes specifically about formal logic and sometimes trying to tie several of my favorite topics together philosophically. In what I consider roughly increasing order of importance, but not chronologically:

• E Pluribus Unum: A Survey of Multi-paradigm Programming

• Formal Logic Undressed: The Director’s Cut

  • My re-presentation of Formal Logic Undressed at Scala World 2015, where I utterly failed to manage my time.

• “Propositions as Types” at Papers We Love Los Angeles
• Typed FP on the Job: Why Bother?, my LambdaConf 2018 keynote.
• FP Scala Meat and Potatoes, my Scale by the Bay 2018 presentation on CRUD apps with http4s and Doobie
• Constructive Criticism: a Critique of Impure Reason, my rambling, philosophical Lambda Squared 2018 keynote.

And with my friend Amanda Graham:

• Types vs. Tests: An Epic Battle?
• Type Systems: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Chronologically, the last two came first. I owe Amanda my role as a public speaker.