[Haskell-cafe] Where does the name "Algebraic data types" come from?

[David Duke]

Also Have a look at work  on algebraic specification e.g. CLEAR, and OBJ,
CLU  work by
Joseph Goguen, Rob Burstall, Jose Meseguer, Liskov  and others. The former
 introduced the idea of
using initial algebras. I couldn't state offhand which came first, however
there was quite a
bit of activity in the 70s that centered on using algebras and ideas from
category theory for
specification and implementation. cf the ML  module system.
Apologies to anyone whose name I've omitted, its been sometime since I
walked in that space.


regards
David

On Fri, Aug 7, 2020 at 9:46 PM Artem Pelenitsyn <a.pelenitsyn at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Hey Li-yao,
>
> This sort of questions is really popular in the TYPES mailing list: you
> might want to ask there, e.g. if nothing comes up here.
>
> —
> Best, Artem
>
> On Fri, Aug 7, 2020 at 4:15 PM Li-yao Xia <lysxia at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Dear Café,
>>
>> What makes "algebraic data types" algebraic? There are at least two
>> common explanations in use:
>>
>> 1. Algebraic data types are defined using sums and products of types, by
>> analogy with, well, concepts from algebra.
>>
>> 2. Algebraic data types are initial algebras.
>>
>> There are numerous blogs online explaining "algebraic data types" that
>> way, with a large majority adopting the more approachable explanation (1).
>>
>> The question is, how did the appellation "algebraic" come about
>> historically? Did it start with one or both of the meanings above?
>>
>> The language feature, independently of the name, seems attributed to the
>> HOPE language[1] (see for instance A History of Haskell: Being Lazy with
>> Class[2]). However, the paper introducing HOPE does not use the word
>> "algebraic" anywhere. Other papers on the topic do not discuss the
>> origins of the word. I am curious about citations regarding the history
>> of the name "algebraic data types" itself.
>>
>> Regards,
>> Li-yao
>>
>> [1]: http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.18.8135
>> [2]:
>>
>> https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/history.pdf
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-- 
David Duke
Emeritus Professor of Computer Science
School of Computing University of Leeds UK
E:duke.j.david at gmail.com
W:https://engineering.leeds.ac.uk/staff/334/Professor_David_Duke
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