A day at Cambridge

I’m just back from a field trip to Microsoft Research at Cambridge, and it was truly an amazing day. We got to listen to two really good talks which reminded me of why computer science is so cool. The first one was about type classes in the programming language Haskell, given by one of the actual designers of the language, Simon Peyton Jones. Needless to say, he knew what he was talking about, making the talk extraordinary.

“Microsoft Research”

The second talk was about machine learning, namely on how the first steps of developing Kinect for Xbox was conducted. Without going into specific details (if you’re really interested click HERE) I can just say that it got me thinking about how much effort that goes into creating this kind of technology. It’s something that is really easy to take for granted, that all these devices around us just work (more or less).

In a few button presses we have the ability to broadcast our thoughts to the entire world, straight from our handheld devices. Thinking that the first SMS sent was in 1992 it’s incredible what one can achieve today.

/An impressed Sofie