Episode 14: Interview Ted Neward

Concurrency

Ted Neward shares valuable insights into concurrency models, emphasizing their importance in programming, particularly in Java and C#. He highlights the similarities in synchronization models between Java and C#, recommending Brian Getz's upcoming book, "Java Concurrency in Practice," as a resource for developers looking to enhance their skills 1. Neward also advocates for embracing immutability in programming, suggesting that preferring immutable objects can simplify concurrency challenges 2.

If I take this basic rule of thumb that says I want to prefer immutable objects and immutable state and program in that mind frame, as opposed to a mind frame that says, oh, well, I'm going to go and set a property on that particular object and therefore change state, and therefore I have to be thread safe and so forth.

--- Ted Neward

By adopting this mindset, developers can reduce the complexity associated with synchronization and thread safety.

   

F# Innovations

Neward explores the innovations and applications of F#, a functional programming language developed by Microsoft. He discusses the potential of F# in leveraging academic research to solve practical programming problems, highlighting the ABS IL toolkit for manipulating assemblies as an example 3. This toolkit allows developers to inject trace functionality into existing assemblies, showcasing the power of functional programming 4.

You just want to say, look, I want to have a little utility that will weave in those tracing calls into the production because I'm having a bug that I can't figure out where it's taking place.

--- Ted Neward

Neward believes that such innovations will drive significant advancements in programming languages over the next five years.