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.
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.
- 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.