[Haskell-cafe] In what language...?

[Richard O'Keefe]

On 27/10/2010, at 7:29 AM, Andrew Coppin wrote:
> I didn't say "people think Haskell is scary because type theory looks crazy". I said "people think Haskell is scary because the typical Haskeller thinks that type theory looks *completely normal*". As in, Haskellers seem to think that every random stranger will know all about this kind of thing, and be completely unfazed by it.

I came to Haskell from ML.  The ML community isn't into category theory (much;
Rod Burstall at Edinburgh was very keen on it).  But they are very definitely into
type theory.  The experience of ML was that getting the theory right was the key
to getting implementations without major loop-holes.

The way type systems are presented owes a great deal to one approach to
specifying logics; type *inference* is basically a kind of deduction, and
you want type inference to be sound, so you have to define what are
valid deduction steps.  I came to ML from logic, so it all made perfect sense.