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Don Syme

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Don Syme in 2006

Don Syme is an Australian computer scientist and a Principal Researcher at GitHub. He is the designer and architect of the F# programming language, described by a reporter as being regarded as "the most original new face in computer languages since Bjarne Stroustrup developed C++ in the early 1980s."[1]. Syme originally created F# as a port of OCaml to Microsoft's .NET Framework[2]. He is a visiting Professor at King's College London.

Earlier, Syme created generics in the .NET Common Language Runtime, including the initial design of generics for the C# programming language, along with others including Andrew Kennedy[1][2][3] and later Anders Hejlsberg. Kennedy, Syme and Dachuan Yu also formalized this widely used system.[4]

Since 2022, he has worked at GitHub Next on artificial intelligence for software engineering, including Continuous AI[5], GitHub Agentic Workflows[6] and Copilot Workspace.[7]. Previously he has worked on formal specification, interactive proof, automated verification and proof description languages.[8]

He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge,[1] and is a member of the IFIP working group on functional programming. He is a co-author of the book Expert F# 4.0.[9]

In 2015, he was honored with a Silver Medal from the Royal Academy of Engineering.[10]

See also

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References

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  1. 1 2 3 Syme, Don. "Interview with Don Syme", Simple Talk, 19 January 2010.
  2. 1 2 Syme, Don (14 June 2020). "The early history of F#". Proceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages. 4 (HOPL): 1–58. doi:10.1145/3386325. ISSN 2475-1421.
  3. ↑ Kennedy and Syme, http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=378797 "Design and implementation of generics for the .NET Common language runtime"
  4. ↑ Kennedy, Syme, Yu http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=964005 "Formalization of generics for the .NET common language runtime"
  5. ↑ Syme, Don et al. "Continuous AI", 24 May 2026.
  6. ↑ Syme, Don et al. "GitHub Agentic Workflows", 24 May 2026.
  7. ↑ Syme, Don et al. "Copilot Workspace", 24 May 2026.
  8. ↑ Syme, Don. "Don Syme at Microsoft Research", 19 January 2010.
  9. ↑ Syme, Don et al. "Expert F# 4.0 at Springer Nature Link", Springer, November 2015.
  10. ↑ "Microsoft researcher Don Syme honoured with silver medal from Royal Academy of Engineering".
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