[Haskell-cafe] Re: FW: Haskell

Loup Vaillant loup.vaillant at gmail.com
Wed Apr 2 04:26:10 EDT 2008


2008/4/2, Janis Voigtlaender <voigt at tcs.inf.tu-dresden.de>:
> apfelmus wrote:
>
> > Janis Voigtlaender wrote:
> >
> > > Loup Vaillant wrote:
> > > >  Thanks to some geniuses (could someone name them?), we have type
> > > > classes and higher order types in Haskell (and even more).
> > >
> > > As far as names go:
> > >
> > > .... for type classes, of course Wadler, but also Blott and Kaes.
> > >
> > > .... for higher order types, well, where to start?
> >
> > Girard and Reynolds?
>
>  Yes, that's the obvious suspects, of course. But I'm not sure I would
>  say they brought polymorphism (assuming that's what is meant by "higher
>  order types") to Haskell. Not in the same way Wadler and co. brought
>  type classes, quite specifically, to Haskell.

By "higher order types", I meant the type of runST (ST monad),
or dpSwich (in yampa). I meant things like
"(forall a, a-> b) -> a -> b", and maybe existential types as well.

But now you mention it, I don't know who came up with mere parametric
polymorphism. (Hindley, Damas, Milner?)

Anyway, thanks for the names (now I have more papers to swallow :-).
Loup


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