[Haskell-cafe] Moggi :: CT -> Hask

[Gregg Reynolds]

Hi Dan,

On Sat, Feb 7, 2009 at 12:00 PM, Dan Doel <dan.doel at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Saturday 07 February 2009 12:11:29 pm Gregg Reynolds wrote:
>
> As far as I know, Moggi didn't really have anything directly to do with
> Haskell. He pioneered the idea of monads being useful in denotational
> semantics. But it was Wadler that recognized that they'd be useful for
> actually writing functional programs (see his "The Essence of Functional
> Programming"). So one might say that it was his doing that brought monads
> to
> Haskell proper.
>

>From what I've read Wadler was clearly the guy who thought of using monads
in Haskell, but he explicitly credits Moggi for coming up with the general
idea.  Moggi just as clearly knew he was on to something powerful and useful
(e.g. something " that could lead to the introduction of higher order
modules in programming languages like ADA or ML").  What I would be
interested in knowing is whether it was Wadler or Moggi who first realized
monads (and CT) could be encoded directly in a target language, not just in
a semantic metalanguage.  Plus there were other people working in the same
area; I just don't know the detailed history.  Might be a good subject for a
blog post for somebody who does.

FYI I made a few corrections to my original post.

-gregg
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