This book explores the role of Martin-Lof s constructive type theory in computer programming. The main focus of the book is how the theory can be successfully applied in practice. Introductory sections provide the necessary background in logic, lambda calculus and constructive mathematics, and exercises and chapter summaries are included to reinforce understanding.
Simon Thompson is Professor of Logic and Computation in the Computing Laboratory of the University of Kent, where he has taught computing at undergraduate and postgraduate levels for the past twenty five years, and where he has been department head for the last six.
His research work has centered on functional programming: program verification, type systems, and most recently development of software tools for functional programming languages. His team has built the HaRe tool for refactoring Haskell programs, and is currently developing Wrangler to do the same for Erlang. His research has been funded by various agencies including EPSRC and the European Framework programme. His training is as a mathematician: he has an MA in Mathematics from Cambridge and a D.Phil. in mathematical logic from Oxford.
He has written four books in his field of interest; Type Theory and Functional Programming published in 1991; Miranda: The Craft of Functional Programming (1995), Haskell: The Craft of Functional Programming (2nd ed. 1999) and Erlang Programming (with Francesco Cesarini, 2009). Apart from the last, which is published by O'Reilly, these are all published by Addison Wesley.
