Recently I have been watching Sean Connery’s old James Bond movies. (When I went to Scotland it was interesting to notice that they wasted no time in pointing out that Sean Connery was once a milkman in Edinburgh.) That minor detail aside, I was wondering what I would like to do when I get out of college.

And then it struck me – I would love to be a high profile programming language designer. People all over the world who need someone to design their languages for them, will know the right man for the job. “Hello, may I speak with Mr. 00\lambda please?”. “Mr. 00\lambda we have an emergency situation here that needs your immediate attention. We need a domain specific language with the following bisimulation properties…” “No, no, Mr. 00\lambda, the weak barbed congruence for the underlying process calculus must be provable, otherwise all hope is lost…” “Our competitors have the advantage of equational reasoning for their monadic computations.”

That would be a good life indeed. “Sorry I am busy today evening, you see I am in Tokyo right now”. “No not tomorrow, tomorrow I am at INRIA in Paris…” “Its the work of a systems programmer! I should have known it…”

And when I am leaving for a mission, Q would hand me that parser generator that is disguised so conveniently as a watch, or that POPLMark verifier that fits in the sole of my shoe. “And what’s that Q?”, “That, my dear lambda, is something special – top secret I must add – that our secret new decidability checker… of course, you know the risks of using it”.

Anyone out there with a great language design job on your hands, come talk to me.