IPL: What Was the IPL Programming Language Used For?
IPL, created in 1956 by Allen Newell, Cliff Shaw and Herbert Simon, introduced list processing and powered the Logic Theorist, one of the first AI programs.
Functional & Logic
Lisp: Is Lisp the Second Oldest Programming Language?
John McCarthy designed Lisp at MIT in 1958. It introduced S-expressions, garbage collection and code-as-data, and lives on in Common Lisp, Scheme, Racket and Clojure.
How Alain Colmerauer Created Prolog in Marseille
Prolog grew out of a French question-answering project in 1972 and became the best-known logic programming language, still used for rules, parsing and symbolic AI.
Robin Milner's ML Language for the LCF Prover
ML began in 1973 as the scripting language of an Edinburgh theorem prover and introduced practical type inference, shaping OCaml, F#, Haskell and Rust.
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Why Steele and Sussman Created Scheme at MIT
Scheme was created at MIT in 1975 as a tiny, lexically scoped Lisp. Its minimalism made it a favourite for teaching and for research into language design.
How Common Lisp Unified the Maclisp Dialects
Common Lisp was created in the early 1980s to merge competing Maclisp successors into one portable language, standardised by ANSI in 1994.
How Joe Armstrong Designed Erlang at Ericsson
Erlang was designed at Ericsson in 1986 to run telephone switches that never stop. Its processes and supervisors now power messaging, queues and Elixir.
Why the Haskell Language Was Named After Haskell Curry
Haskell was designed by a committee to unify lazy functional languages. They named it after logician Haskell Curry, whose work underpins the whole idea.
OCaml History: Why Jane Street Uses OCaml for Trading
OCaml grew out of INRIA's Caml research in 1996. Its type system and native speed won over theorem provers, compiler writers and a famous trading firm.
How F# Brought ML-Style Programming to .NET
F# took the ML family of languages and made it a first-class citizen on .NET. Its origins, features, influence on C# and where it is used now.
Why Rich Hickey Built Clojure on the JVM
Clojure is a Lisp that chose the JVM on purpose. Why Rich Hickey made that choice, what makes the language different, and where it runs today.
Why José Valim Created Elixir on the Erlang VM
A Rails core developer frustrated with concurrency built a friendlier language on Erlang's battle-tested VM. Here is how Elixir came to power Discord and Phoenix.
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Is Gleam a Good Typed Alternative to Elixir?
Gleam brings static types to the Erlang VM with a tiny, friendly language. Here is where it came from, how it compares to Elixir, and what is still missing.
