PWLConf 2019 Link: https://pwlconf.org/2019/shriram-krishnamurthi/
Slides / Captions: https://github.com/papers-we-love/pwlconf-info/tree/master/2019/shriram-krishnamurthi

On the Expressive Power of Programming Languages
Shriram Krishnamurthi, Prof. of Computer Science, Brown University

Papers are like poems. Some are dazzling, some are pedestrian, some are insightful, and some reward long periods of quiet contemplation. They stir up an emotional reaction that goes beyond the strictly rational, and can often be deeply personal.

In graduate school, during a period of identity crisis, I came across Matthias Felleisen's “On the Expressive Power of Programming Languages”. At a time when the world was ruled by C++, I had immersed myself in Scheme, so I always looked skeptically at mainstream linguistic claims. However, the language wars seemed beyond rational discourse. So the idea that someone could take a concept as nebulous as “expressiveness&rdquo and formalize it was already a revelation. But the beauty of…