Manuel Chakravarty Curry On 2017 Interview

Written by Eric Normand. Published: June 16, 2017. Updated: April 11, 2018.

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Manuel Chakravarty will be giving a talk at Curry On 2017. His talk is called Haskell SpriteKit --- A Case Study in Turning a Stateful into a Purely Functional API.

Follow him on his Homepage, GitHub and Twitter.

PurelyFunctional.tv: How did you get into Functional Programming?

Manuel Chakravarty: I first got exposed to functional programming during my undergrad, where I was especially intrigued by subjects concerning programming languages and compilers.

PF.tv: What is your talk about?

MC: My talk is about Haskell SpriteKit, a Haskell wrapper for Apple's 2D animation and games framework.

In particular, it focuses on how Haskell SpriteKit manages to provide a purely functional interface to the imperative, object-oriented scene graph underlying the Objective-C API of SpriteKit.

PF.tv: Who is your talk for?

MC: The talk will be general enough that you can follow without any previous experience in using of Haskell or SpriteKit. It is especially aimed at people who are interested in learning how we can provide purely functional interfaces to APIs that are seemingly inherently imperative.

PF.tv: What do you hope people will take away from the talk?

MC: I hope my talk will inspire people to design purely functional interfaces to existing frameworks, where they previously thought they need to stick with the imperative nature of the framework. I also hope they are inspired to try using Haskell and the Haskell SpriteKit library and maybe develop a game in Haskell.

PF.tv: What concepts do you recommend people be familiar with to maximize their experience with the talk?

MC: It will be easier to follow the talk with some basic knowledge of Haskell, including Haskell's record syntax. However, I will explain everything on the fly.

PF.tv: What resources are available for people who want to study up before the talk?

MC: Check out our Haskell tutorial with screencasts.

PF.tv: Where can people follow you online?

MC: I am @TacticalGrace on Twitter and @mchakravarty on GitHub. And if you like, check out my blog.

PF.tv: Are there any projects you'd like people to be aware of? How can people help out?

MC: Have a look at the GitHub repo for Haskell SpriteKit.

The Haskell library currently only covers part of the functionality provided by SpriteKit. Some help in completing the binding would be awesome!

PF.tv: Where do you see the state of functional programming in 10 years?

MC: World domination! ;)

Seriously, the growth rate of functional programming in recent years is phenomenal and, I see a lot of interest from developers and also software shops to tap into the benefits of functional programming. In 10 years, it will be as unthinkable for a developer to be ignorant of functional programming as it is now to be ignorant of object-oriented programming.

PF.tv: If functional programming were a superhero, what superpower would it have?

MC: The superpower of supreme clarity!