In this interview recorded at QCon London 2008, computer scientist and researcher Simon Peyton Jones discusses the properties of functional programming languages - and Haskell in particular - that have inspired some features in mainstream languages. He gives, for instance, his opinion about F# and implications of its implementation on the top of .Net framework.
Simon also talks about the issues of syntax and language complexity and discusses some research work on subjects such as Data parallelism and transactional memory.
For more insights, watch Simon Peyton Jones on Programming Languages and Research Work (43min)