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

LISP

1958-01-01T00:00:00Z CE

John McCarthy designs LISP at MIT, a language of recursive functions over symbolic expressions borrowing λ notation.