Haskell is a pure, lazy, strongly typed functional programming language. It was influenced by languages like Lisp, ML, and Miranda. There are two main implementations, GHC which compiles to native code, and Hugs which is a bytecode interpreter. Haskell avoids bugs through its purity, strong typing, conciseness, and memory management. It is used in industries like aerospace, finance, and web development for tasks like processing internet abuse complaints, programmatically manipulating code, and implementing mathematical models.