Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 June 2025
This chapter describes the evolution of computing systems, from data processing to an emphasis on communication, and motivates a corresponding evolution of the concept of typing. Data types codify the structure of data, and go back to the early days of programming languages. This book is about session types, which codify the structure of communication – they are type-theoretic specifications of communication protocols. The chapter summarises the assumptions about communication that are necessary for the theory of session types, and describes the behavioural safety properties that are guaranteed by checking session types.
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