John Hughes, Professor at the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, has received the ACM SIGPLAN Programming Languages Achievement Award for his significant and lasting contributions to programming languages and software testing.
A long career and a pioneering work on QuickCheck
John Hughes is recognised for a career spanning several decades, including his contributions to the design of the functional programming language Haskell and his pioneering work on QuickCheck, which helped establish the field of property-based testing.
QuickCheck changed the way software can be tested. Instead of writing individual test cases, developers describe properties – general rules for how the software should behave. QuickCheck then automatically generates large numbers of test cases to find situations where those rules do not hold. This approach, known as property-based testing, can reveal unexpected bugs that might otherwise be difficult to find.
For John Hughes, the award also reflects the connection between his academic research and his work with Quviq, the software testing company he co-founded.
“I am very pleased that the award recognises, I believe, both my research work and all the work I have done at Quviq, promoting the ideas. I firmly believe it’s the synergy between the two which has resulted in this award – and that’s something to celebrate,” says John Hughes.
The ACM SIGPLAN Programming Languages Achievement Award is presented by ACM’s Special Interest Group on Programming Languages and recognises major and lasting contributions to the field.
“This highly prestigious award is given to people who have shaped how programming languages are designed, understood and used. Congratulations to John!” says David Sands, Deputy Head of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering.