History of Programming Languages
History of Programming Languages
To date, there have been two conferences focusing on programming languages. The Special Interest Group on Programming Languages (SIGPLAN) of the Association for Computing Machinery sponsored two "History of Programming Languages (HOPL)" conferences. The first of these took place in Los Angeles in 1978, and focused on thirteen early languages: ALGOL, APL, APT, BASIC, COBOL, FORTRAN, GPSS, JOSS, JOVIAL, LISP, PL/I, SIMULA, and SNOBOL. The prospectus for the first HOPL conferences stipulated that to be considered, the languages had to have been "created and in use by 1967, remain in use in 1977, and had a considerable influence on the field of computing."
The second HOPL conference took place in Cambridge, MA in 1994, and focused on fourteen later languages: Ada, ALGOL 68, C, C++, Discrete Simulation Languages, FORMAC, Forth, Icon, Lisp, Monitors and concurrent Pascal, Pascal, Prolog, and Smalltalk. The prospectus for the second HOPL conference stipulated that to be considered "preliminary ideas about the language [should have been] documented by 1982 and the language .. in use or being taught by 1985."
Although the Program Committees of the respective HOPL conferences did an excellent job of encouraging authors and editing material, many languages had to be excluded due to the time constraints of a three day conference. Thus, there is a pressing need to capture information and materials on languages which were not represented at these conferences.
Existing analyses of the history of early programming languages show most to be the work of individuals (APL, Pascal, C++), with some notable exceptions (Ada, COBOL, and ALGOL). At the present time, we see numerous languages in widespread use such as Java, Visual C++ and Visual Basic, which are the products of corporate efforts, and thus have multiple "developers". Since the use of these "object-oriented and visual" languages is growing at a tremendous rate, capturing their
To date, there have been two conferences focusing on programming languages. The Special Interest Group on Programming Languages (SIGPLAN) of the Association for Computing Machinery sponsored two "History of Programming Languages (HOPL)" conferences. The first of these took place in Los Angeles in 1978, and focused on thirteen early languages: ALGOL, APL, APT, BASIC, COBOL, FORTRAN, GPSS, JOSS, JOVIAL, LISP, PL/I, SIMULA, and SNOBOL. The prospectus for the first HOPL conferences stipulated that to be considered, the languages had to have been "created and in use by 1967, remain in use in 1977, and had a considerable influence on the field of computing."
The second HOPL conference took place in Cambridge, MA in 1994, and focused on fourteen later languages: Ada, ALGOL 68, C, C++, Discrete Simulation Languages, FORMAC, Forth, Icon, Lisp, Monitors and concurrent Pascal, Pascal, Prolog, and Smalltalk. The prospectus for the second HOPL conference stipulated that to be considered "preliminary ideas about the language [should have been] documented by 1982 and the language .. in use or being taught by 1985."
Although the Program Committees of the respective HOPL conferences did an excellent job of encouraging authors and editing material, many languages had to be excluded due to the time constraints of a three day conference. Thus, there is a pressing need to capture information and materials on languages which were not represented at these conferences.
Existing analyses of the history of early programming languages show most to be the work of individuals (APL, Pascal, C++), with some notable exceptions (Ada, COBOL, and ALGOL). At the present time, we see numerous languages in widespread use such as Java, Visual C++ and Visual Basic, which are the products of corporate efforts, and thus have multiple "developers". Since the use of these "object-oriented and visual" languages is growing at a tremendous rate, capturing their