[Haskell-cafe] Re: historical question about Haskell and Haskell Curry

[Jon Fairbairn]

Michael Vanier <mvanier at cs.caltech.edu> writes:

> 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? 

At the time the name was chosen, SK combinators had been one
of the main ways of implementing lazy functional
languages. Although they had already been supplanted by
compilation to more general combinators, some form of
combinators were still part of the compilation process, so
the connexion with combinatory logic was fresh in our minds.

> If not, why isn't Haskell called "Alonzo"? ;-)

I think that was one of the suggestions made among many
others. Haskell has the advantage of sounding less like a
person's name (which might have been why Curry didn't like
it).

-- 
Jón Fairbairn                                 Jon.Fairbairn at cl.cam.ac.uk