Harper has somewhat... unorthodox views on the subject (and has had them for a long time). Here's the HN discussion of the essay he links to in that parenthetical: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2346590. Quite a few also-prominent PLs researchers comment negatively in the comments on his post as well.
In general I find Harper's "positive" opinions on the design of ML better than his "negative" opinions on why everything that isn't ML is doing it wrongwrongwrong, but he's definitely quite intelligent and usually has some good points.
Comments
Harper has somewhat... unorthodox views on the subject (and has had them for a long time). Here's the HN discussion of the essay he links to in that parenthetical: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2346590. Quite a few also-prominent PLs researchers comment negatively in the comments on his post as well.
In general I find Harper's "positive" opinions on the design of ML better than his "negative" opinions on why everything that isn't ML is doing it wrongwrongwrong, but he's definitely quite intelligent and usually has some good points.