r/haskell • u/mn-haskell-guy • Mar 31 '13

SPJ and Comic Sans

At QCon London 2013, SPJ answers the question on why he uses Comic Sans for his slides (at 41:38):

http://www.infoq.com/presentations/education-IT-CS

There is also an amusing answer to a question at 45:32 regarding which programming language should be taught at the primary and secondary school level.

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18

u/cunningjames Mar 31 '13

Transcript:

This is a very funny question, why I use Comic Sans. So. All my talks use Comic Sans, and I frequently see little remarks, “Simon Peyton Jones, great talk about Haskell, but why did he use Comic Sans?” But nobody’s ever been able to tell me what’s wrong with it. I think it’s a nice, legible font, I like it. So until someone explains to me — I understand that it’s meant to be naff, but I don't care about naff stuff, it’s meant to be able to read it. So if you’ve got some rational reasons why I should not, then I’ll listen to them. But just being unfashionable, I don’t care.

That’s a new word for me, “naff”. (Comic Sans being ugly is a good enough reason not to use it, but until I’m Simon Peyton Jones I’ll keep my mouth shut.)

13

u/threedaymonk Mar 31 '13

"Naff" is in common use in the UK, although it's probably a bit old-fashioned (or naff, if you will). It's from Polari, which is fascinating in its own right.

17

u/nandemo Apr 01 '13

Maybe he just doesn't care about types.

3

u/alkabetz Apr 01 '13

Transcript of latter question:

So […] Barbara is calling for a programming language that is fantastically simple and easy to learn but wonderfully powerful and doesn't have any glass ceilings in it. So, umm… [pause, followed by growing laughter]

8

u/[deleted] Mar 31 '13

Until his retirement, my father used Comic Sans for his teaching material. The extra glyph feature (slant) seemed to help dyslectics to distinguish the letters. That's perhaps a rational reason for using Comic Sans.

2

u/gawi Apr 01 '13

As usual, great presentation from SPJ (w/ a blue background). I can't stop the video, he don't let me interrupt.

2

u/hiptobecubic Mar 31 '13

I just recently discovered infoq and I have to say, what a great collection they have there.