From the Categorical_abstract_machine entry on wikipedia, which I'm not allowed to link to: > "The notion of categorical abstract machine, or CAM arose in the mid-1980s and in computer science takes a place of a kind of theory of computation for programmers. In a theory CAM is represented by Cartesian closed category (c.c.c.) and embedded into the combinatory logic." Caml (aka the basis for Microsoft's F#) is an acronym for Categorical Abstract Machine Language. Other interesting reading is [A Categorical Manifesto by Joseph Goguen][1]. His language project is the OBJ family of languages. Which I can't link to because I'm a new user and am restricted to 1 hyperlink. [1]: http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/145008