On Wed, Jun 8, 2011 at 2:00 AM, Malcolm Wallace <malcolm.wallace@me.com> wrote:

> More seriously, the influence of Haskell over F# (and even Python) is undoubted, but do you really think Haskell influenced Java Generics? (IMHO they were more inspired from C++ templates)
> (That is a question, not an assertion).

Phil Wadler had a hand in designing both Haskell and Java Generics I believe.

As far as I understand, Java/C# Generics and C++ templates "are" merely keywords around what we Haskellers call "parametric polymorphism". �In other words, our type language is rich enough to express types like:

stringConcat :: [String] -> String

and

concat :: Monoid a => [a] -> a

using the "same" typing language, whereas the C-style languages require annotations. �(You can probably guess which I prefer. �I don't need keywords to tell me what the code describes, then the code describes it so clearly)

I can't find any literature that specifically credits functional�languages�for the feature, but�Bjarne Stoustrup himself�acknowledges�that functional programmers would tend to find template metaprogramming easier than others. �He was probably aware of functional implementations (Haskell? �Miranda? ML?) when he said that.

I don't see the connection between Haskell's typeful programming and Python. �List comprehensions are set-builder-notation-like syntactic sugar for lists. �I didn't use them in Python and I don't use them in Haskell.