Influence of KRC and SASL on Haskell?

Question

While learning Haskell I took a side road (so to speak) in researching the Kent Recursive Calculator and SASL functional languages. I was immediately struck by the similarities between them and Haskell and since they predate it I wonder if/how they provided influence.

Any information regarding the influence (or lack thereof) of KRC and SASL on Haskell would be much appreciated.

Herefordshire

Answer 1

The connection you're probably looking for here is that David Turner, who was largely responsible for SASL and KRC, was also involved with Miranda, a non-strict, purely functional language. Miranda was relatively popular in its time, but was a proprietary language; an open standard alternative to Miranda was a major motivation for the creation of Haskell.

For further details, see also A History Of Haskell: Being Lazy With Class, by Hudak, Hughes, SPJ, and Wadler, which mentions Turner's work as well as other influences on Haskell.

Loom

That was indeed the missing link! Thank you. – Herefordshire

Haskell was initially based on OL, a variant of Orwell, both developed by Wadler. Wadler was influenced by KRC and Miranda. SASL and KRC influenced a whole generation of languages, most of which were used only at single sites. Haskell was developed as a common language to replace these many similar languages. It seems to have been mostly successful; I think that out of that generation, only Clean lives on. – Tidings

@Jeremy W. Sherman: Yeah, there's not really any simple line of descent for "where this language came from", but everything I've heard is that Miranda was the front-runner of that generation by a good margin when Haskell was first developed. Either way, Turner's indirect influence on Haskell was significant. – Loom