Haskell 1.0

April 1990Haskell 1.0

The first specificationHaskell 1.0 of Haskell, called the “Haskell Report”.

The preface explains where the idea came about:

In September of 1987 a meeting was held at the conference on Functional Programming Languages and Computer Architecture in Portland, Oregon, to discuss an unfortunate situation in the functional programming community: there had come into being more than a dozen non-strict, purely functional programming languages, all similar in expressive power and semantic underpinnings. There was a strong consensus at this meeting that more widespread use of this class of functional languages was being hampered by the lack of a common language. It was decided that a committee should be formed to design such a language, providing faster communication of new ideas, a stable foundation for real applications development, and a vehicle through which others would be encouraged to use functional languages.

It goes on to list the goals for the language, including among them:

The committee hopes that HASKELL can serve as a basis for future research in language design. We hope that extensions or variants of the language may appear, incorporating experimental features.

Indeed, the history of Haskell is a long saga full of extensions and experimental features.

The acknowledgements section includes a list of important influences on Haskell. “Without these forerunners Haskell would not have been possible”: Alonzo Church, J. Barkley Rosser, Haskell Curry, Lisp, Scheme, ISWIM, FP, ML, Hope, and Miranda.

The Report refers to its fifteen authors as “The Haskell Committee”: Paul Hudak, Philip Wadler, Arvind, Brian Boutel, Jon Fairbairn, Joseph Fasel, Kevin Hammond, John Hughes, Thomas Johnsson, Dick Kieburtz, Rishiyur Nikhil, Simon Peyton Jones, Mike Reeve, David Wise, and Jonathan Young.