Simon Marlow leaves Microsoft Research for Facebook

Today in the mailing list, Simon Marlow announced that he is leaving MIcrosoft Research.

“I plan to take a short break and complete my book on Haskell’s multithreaded and parallel programming for O'Relly, and then start working in the UK Facebook office in March 2013,” he writes.

Simon Marlow is one of the creators of the Haskell language and one of the leading developers of the single most popular compiler, GHC.
Since 1997, together with other programmers, he has been working at Microsoft Research and is exclusively engaged in the development of GHC. In particular, Simon is responsible for developing most of the run time system.
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What will be the consequences of this transition to judge early. But we can confidently say that the development of GHC will slow down.

Simon himself writes:
“How will this affect the GHC? Obviously, I will have much less time to work on the compiler. But I expect to devote some time to correcting bugs and development assistance. ”

However, despite the slowdown in compiler development, the situation has a downside. If Facebook is interested in developing the niche of functional programming where Haskell is located, it is possible Simon will be involved in the adaptation of the technologies of this language for business. And this can serve as a push to increase its popularity.