# Mind the Gap: General-Purpose Programming Languages Impede Scientific Model Development and Communication (PROPL 2026)

*2026-08-26 — video*


Computational models increasingly serve as the primary scientific artefacts in climate and
earth-system research, yet the general-purpose languages used to build them often fail to express key
domain semantics. We argue that this limits scientists' ability to represent and verify
domain-specific concepts and invariants even as the community pushes toward more open, modular, and
interoperable modeling ecosystems. We therefore advocate programming-language designs for
computational science that make such domain meaning explicit and compositional, for example through
intersection types or graded type systems.

Talk by [Dominic Orchard](https://dorchard.github.io) (University of Cambridge and University of Kent) at the
[PROPL 2026](https://pldi26.sigplan.org/home/propl-2026) workshop at
[PLDI 2026](https://pldi26.sigplan.org/) in Boulder, Colorado on 15th June 2026.
Mirror of <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hc93jmlgvY>.
Type: Video
URL: https://watch.eeg.cl.cam.ac.uk/videos/watch/606a7f50-a534-4361-a864-75198b60a7a4

## Related

- [The 3rd Programming for the Planet 2026 videos are available](https://anil.recoil.org/notes/pldi26-propl) (note, 2026-08-28)

---
Canonical: https://anil.recoil.org/videos/606a7f50-a534-4361-a864-75198b60a7a4
Type: video
Tags: propl, plancomp, climate, programming-languages, conference