Orwell (programming language)

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.

Orwell

Paradigm	Lazy, functional
Designed by	Philip Wadler
Developer	Martin Raskovsky
First appeared	1984; 41 years ago (1984)
Stable release	6.00 / January 1990; 35 years ago (1990-01)
OS	Unix
Influenced by
Miranda
Influenced
Haskell

The name is a tribute to George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, the year in which the 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, Philip; Miller, Quentin (October 1988). Introduction to Orwell 5.00 (Report). Oxford University Computing Laboratory, Programming Research Group.
• Wadler, Philip; Miller, Quentin (January 1990). Introduction to Orwell 6.00 (Report). Oxford University Computing Laboratory, Programming Research Group.