The Geek Talk

Who is Steve Jenson?

A programmer living in San Francisco, CA. I write software in Scala and Ruby at Twitter, Inc where I work on the Infrastructure team.

Ruby or Scala?

Both.

Ruby gives you a lot of flexibility at runtime to change your environment and integrates well into my unix workflow.
Scala gives you wonderful tools for constructing software algebraically and a well tuned runtime for writing servers.

What does your typical day look like?

I’m out the door at 7, on the bus to downtown San Francisco. I work out and and am at my desk by 9:30. I leave the office around 6:30, take a bus back home. I use my commute time to read books and papers. I try to be in bed by 10.

What do you do in your free time?

I like to read and program. I enjoy classic video games: I recently picked up a dreamcast and super nintendo. I like creative games like Space Giraffe.

I spend time with my wife watching movies and eating at restaurants. We also spend time with our cats.

Current favorite apps?

• Emacs, I use the CVS nightlies on Snow Leopard
• Ack for finding my way through code. I use it from emacs with full-ack
• Echofon for reading Twitter
• Favstar for seeing who likes my tweets
• Instapaper for reading things later
• Github for storing my projects

What OS do you prefer?

I use OS X at home and at work. I also run Linux. Forth is also a fun operating system that you can write yourself.

Small picture for your Workplace?

My Desk in my home office

Favorite: Language, JS Framework?

Lisp is the ultimate high-level language.
Forth is the ultimate low-level language.
J is a brain twister with lots of lessons available to be learned.

I wouldn’t say they’re my favorites but they’re great subjects for study.

JavaScript isn’t my thing, I rely on jQuery for any cross-browsing heavy lifting.

Name something that has inspired you recently?

I’ve rediscovered Scheme48. It’s small and the papers around it are wonderful.

Xavier Leroy’s thesis on the implementation of CAML Light (called ZINC in his paper) is really great. If you’ve ever wondered how to efficiently implement a functional language, this is the paper to start with.

What are your personal projects and goals for 2010?

• Implement a type synthesizer
• Build a simple theorem prover based on the Calculus of Construction
• Write a simple JIT for my SECD implementation

As you can tell, I’m interested in programming languages and runtime environments.