type inferencing as used in haskell et al, that's a fairly recent development - early 90's/late 80's?
Category theory is another perhaps - it's from the 40's but it's application to programming is new - 80's perhaps?
Category theory is another perhaps - it's from the 40's but it's application to programming is new - 80's perhaps?
Of course there may be pre-ML work predating even that.
According to the wikipedia page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_inference#Hindley.E2.80.93...), it dates back to 1978
It seems like that might be the next transformational idea, since it hasn't transformed mainstream language yet.