On 7/18/07, Michael Vanier
We always say that Haskell is named for Haskell Curry because his work provided the logical/computational foundations for the language. How exactly is this the case? Specifically, does anyone claim that Curry's combinatorial logic is more relevant to the theoretical foundations of Haskell than e.g. Church's lambda calculus? If not, why isn't Haskell called "Alonzo"? ;-)
I'd guess it's because Haskell is a language that provides type inference, and Curry's logic is implicitly typed, whereas Church's typed lambda calculus is typed explicitly. (Why no Haskell compilers' intermediate languages are named "Alonzo" is left as an exercise for the reader :-) Cheers, Tim -- Tim Chevalier* catamorphism.org *Often in error, never in doubt "Base eight is just like base ten, really... if you're missing two fingers." -- Tom Lehrer