Orwell is a small,

lazy evaluation In programming language theory, lazy evaluation, or call-by-need, is an evaluation strategy which delays the evaluation of an Expression (computer science), expression until its value is needed (non-strict evaluation) and which avoids repeated eva ...

, functional

programming language A programming language is a system of notation for writing computer programs. Programming languages are described in terms of their Syntax (programming languages), syntax (form) and semantics (computer science), semantics (meaning), usually def ...

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 Haskell () is a general-purpose, statically typed, purely functional programming language with type inference and lazy evaluation. Designed for teaching, research, and industrial applications, Haskell pioneered several programming language ...

and was one of the first programming languages to support list comprehensions and

pattern matching In computer science, pattern matching is the act of checking a given sequence of tokens for the presence of the constituents of some pattern. In contrast to pattern recognition, the match usually must be exact: "either it will or will not be a ...

. 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

undergraduate Undergraduate education is education conducted after secondary education and before postgraduate education, usually in a college or university. It typically includes all postsecondary programs up to the level of a bachelor's degree. For example, ...

s studying for a degree in ''Mathematics and Computation'' at

Oxford University The University of Oxford is a collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the second-oldest continuously operating u ...

were required to be completed using the language.

References

* * Academic programming languages Functional languages Haskell programming language family Programming languages created in 1984 {{Prog-lang-stub