History
Parametric polymorphism was first introduced to programming languages in ML in 1976. Today it exists in Standard ML, OCaml, F#, Ada, Haskell, Visual Prolog, Scala, and others. Java, C#, Visual Basic .NET and Delphi have each recently introduced "generics" for parametric polymorphism. Some implementations of type polymorphism are superficially similar to parametric polymorphism while also introducing ad-hoc aspects. One example is C++ template specialization.
The most general form of polymorphism is "higher-rank impredicative polymorphism". Two popular restrictions of this form are restricted rank polymorphism (for example, rank-1 or prenex polymorphism) and predicative polymorphism. Together, these restrictions give "predicative prenex polymorphism", which is essentially the form of polymorphism found in ML and early versions of Haskell.
Read more about this topic: Parametric Polymorphism
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The history of all Magazines shows plainly that those which have attained celebrity were indebted for it to articles similar in natureto Berenicealthough, I grant you, far superior in style and execution. I say similar in nature. You ask me in what does this nature consist? In the ludicrous heightened into the grotesque: the fearful coloured into the horrible: the witty exaggerated into the burlesque: the singular wrought out into the strange and mystical.”
—Edgar Allan Poe (18091849)
“All history attests that man has subjected woman to his will, used her as a means to promote his selfish gratification, to minister to his sensual pleasures, to be instrumental in promoting his comfort; but never has he desired to elevate her to that rank she was created to fill. He has done all he could to debase and enslave her mind; and now he looks triumphantly on the ruin he has wrought, and say, the being he has thus deeply injured is his inferior.”
—Sarah M. Grimke (17921873)
“Let us not underrate the value of a fact; it will one day flower in a truth. It is astonishing how few facts of importance are added in a century to the natural history of any animal. The natural history of man himself is still being gradually written.”
—Henry David Thoreau (18171862)