Orwell (programming language)
| Paradigm | Lazy, functional |
|---|---|
| Designed by | Philip Wadler |
| Developer | Martin Raskovsky |
| First appeared | 1984 |
| OS | Unix |
| Influenced by | |
| Miranda | |
| Influenced | |
| Haskell | |
Orwell is a small, lazy-evaluation functional programming language implemented principally by Martin Raskovsky and first released in 1984 by Philip Wadler during his time as a Research Fellow in the Programming Research Group, part of the Oxford University Computing Laboratory. Developed as a free alternative to Miranda, it was a forerunner of Haskell and was one of the first programming languages to support list comprehensions and pattern matching.
The name is a tribute to George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, the year in which the programming language was released. In the late 1980s and the 1990s, most of the computing practical assignments for undergraduates studying for a degree in Mathematics and Computation at Oxford University were required to be completed using the language.
References
- Wadler, P.L.; et al. (1988). "Introduction to Orwell 5.00". Programming Research Group of Oxford University.