When we look at a skyscraper or a suspension bridge, a simple search engine box on a screen looks tiny by comparison. But Dr. Simon Peyton Jones would like to remind us that computer programs, with hundreds of millions of lines of code, are actually among the largest structures human beings have ever built. A principle researcher at the Microsoft Research Lab in Cambridge, England, co-developer of the programming language Haskell, and a Fellow of Britain’s Royal Society, Simon Peyton Jones has dedicated his life to this very particular kind of construction work.

Today, Dr. Peyton Jones shares his passion for functional programming research, reveals how a desire to help other researchers write and present better turned him into an unlikely YouTube star, and explains why, at least in the world of programming languages, purity is embarrassing, laziness is cool, and success should be avoided at all costs.