Type theory and functional programming: a history

From Frege's Begriffsschrift and Russell's theory of types to the lambda calculus, Curry–Howard, ML and Haskell, dependent types and proof assistants, and functional ideas in mainstream languages. Moments are tagged (type theory, logic, lambda calculus, category theory, proof assistants, languages, compilers & implementation, effects, people) and colored by their first tag; eras are shown as spans and lines trace lineages. Dates are publication or release dates unless a note says otherwise. Summaries are our own; each moment links to its Wikipedia sources.

82 moments · 1879-01-01T00:00:00Z CE – 2025-01-01T00:00:00Z CE · by @athan · @athan

LCF

1972-01-01T00:00:00Z CE

Robin Milner's Logic for Computable Functions, at Stanford and then Edinburgh, makes theorems an abstract type that only inference rules can create.