[TYPES] analogy between Felleisen's syntactic theories of state and Hindley-Milner constraints

[Gerard Boudol]

Francois Pottier wrote:
> [ The Types Forum, http://lists.seas.upenn.edu/mailman/listinfo/types-list ]
>
>
> Hi,
>
>
>   
> That's also the way \nu binders float up in the pi-calculus. It is, by now, a
> standard way to provide local rewriting rules that explain global generation
> of fresh names. Didier and I did not invent anything here. I don't know who
> is the earliest inventor of this idea.
Hello,

as far as the pi-calculus is concerned, I think the idea of moving 
binders and having only "local" reductions comes from the paper on the 
Chemical Abstract Machine I wrote with Gérard Berry, where reduction is 
"reaction" of "molecules in contact". Then Milner popularized the idea 
under the name of "structural equivalence" (or, for some people, 
congruence).

Cheers,

Gérard