Re:Using SBCL Common Lisp as a Dynamic Library
by dbmacqueen on Sunday April 17, 2022 @04:32PM
(#31064196)
Type inference is hinted at in a 1934 paper by Haskell Curry on "functionality" (i.e. types) for combinatory logic. Max Newman (Turning mentor and leader of the Colossus project at Bletchley Park) published a paper in 1943 giving the first algorithm for type inference for the lambda calculus that I know of.
I don't want to belabor on technicalities. Your original point was about "table stakes" for type systems in order to be relevant for modern-day software engineering. While I agree a language that attempts to incorporate fashionable computational constructs (like variable binding and lambda terms) ought to derive its type system from something H-M-esque—if only because it's so well understood—it's certainly not a requirement for the language to be taken seriously, and it's certainly not without significant peril in the presence of mutation constructions. I honestly think C, vanilla Common Lisp, and pre-generic Go are sufficiently disparate examples of that.