About Paul Haahr

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I'm a software engineer. I consider myself a generalist in computer science and a systems programmer. Over my career, I've worked on programming language design and implementation, networking, file systems, 2D graphics, and web applications. I like the variety, which is another way of saying that I get bored quickly.

In general, my areas of interest concern how to use computers efficiently, measured in both human and computer time. Hence, I'm strongly interested in languages and tools for making programming easier and making it easier to produce fast programs. That has lead to a lot of thinking about how to design interfaces and protocols well.

I work at Google, which is the most interesting job I've ever had. Google's mission is, I think, the most important task currently facing computer science: Organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. That makes it a fascinating place to work. The company is doing more than many people realize. And the technology draws deeply from many different areas within computer science. (We're hiring.)

I'm married to Susan Karp. Our son, Matthew Julian Haahr, was born on March 16, 2001. We live in San Francisco.