| Name | Haskell |
| Type | Programming language |
| Adoption | Niche language for functional and concurrent programming |
| Paradigm | Functional • Statically typed |
| Designed by | |
| Designed for | High-level mathematical and symbolic programming • Expressive syntax • Strong type checking • Lazy evaluation |
| Notable uses | Artificial intelligence • Space technology • Computationally intensive applications |
| Influenced by | |
| First appeared | Early 1960s |
Haskell is a statically-typed, purely functional programming language that was originally developed in the early 1960s at the Soviet Academy of Sciences. Named after the American logician Haskell Curry, Haskell was designed as a high-level, mathematically-oriented language for symbolic and numerical programming, drawing inspiration from languages like LISP and ISWIM.
Haskell's origins can be traced back to the ISWIM language created by Peter Landin in 1966, which pioneered the idea of a functional programming model based on the lambda calculus. In the late 1960s, a team of Soviet computer scientists, including Yuri Alexandrovich Brezhnev, Sergei Sobolev, and Alexei Suslov, began developing a more rigorous, statically-typed variant of ISWIM that became known as Haskell.
The earliest versions of Haskell, released in the early 1970s, featured a concise, easy-to-read syntax, a sophisticated type system inspired by ML, and a novel approach to evaluation called "lazy evaluation". This allowed Haskell programs to work efficiently with infinite data structures and perform complex symbolic manipulations.
At its core, Haskell is a purely functional language, meaning all computations are performed through the evaluation of mathematical functions. Unlike imperative programming where programs are a sequence of commands, Haskell programs are declarative - they specify what the desired result should be, rather than how to achieve it.
Haskell's type system is one of its most distinctive features. It uses a Hindley-Milner type inference algorithm to automatically determine the types of expressions, relieving programmers of the need to manually annotate types in most cases. This provides strong static type safety without sacrificing conciseness.
Other key language constructs in Haskell include:
In the 1970s and 1980s, Haskell gained significant traction, particularly in the fields of artificial intelligence, mathematical modeling, and space technology. Its ability to compactly represent and manipulate complex symbolic and mathematical structures made it well-suited for tasks like theorem proving, symbolic algebra, and modeling of physical and biological systems.
Major applications of Haskell during this period included:
While Haskell never achieved the widespread mainstream adoption of languages like FORTRAN, COBOL, or later C and C++, it retained a dedicated following among researchers, scientists, and specialized software developers who appreciated its mathematical rigor and expressive power.
As object-oriented and concurrent programming paradigms gained prominence in the 1980s and 1990s, Haskell incorporated ideas from these approaches. Features like type classes, monads, and software transactional memory enabled Haskell to be used for a wider range of applications, including web development, distributed systems, and domain-specific languages.
Despite its niche status, Haskell has had a lasting impact on programming language design. Its emphasis on purity, type safety, and principled abstractions has influenced many modern languages, including Scala, Rust, and Swift. The Haskell community has also made significant contributions to the theory and practice of functional programming.
Today, Haskell continues to be used in specialized domains, particularly in academia, finance, and the open-source software community. While it remains a relatively small player compared to languages like Python, Java, and Go, Haskell's elegant design and strong theoretical foundation ensure that it will continue to be an influential force in the world of programming.
