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A history of the history of programming languages

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 ACM at

A History of the History of

Programming Languages
“If I have seen further it is by standing
on the shoulders of giants.”
—ISAAC NEWTON, IN A LETTER TO ROBERT HOOKE,

A
FEB. 15, 1676

B y THOMAS J. (TIM) BERGIN

s we celebrate ACM’s first 60 years, it seems appropriate

to acknowledge the contributions to the historical
record made by the three ACM SIGPLAN History of
Programming Language (HOPL) conferences. In
1978, 1993, and the upcoming third installation
June 9–10 (in San Diego), the HOPL conferences
capture the history of most of the important
computer languages by getting individuals who
were involved in the development of 40+
programming languages to tell their stories.
The HOPL (I) attendees heard John
Backus explain the origins of FORTRAN,
the first language to be standardized; HOPL-II attendees heard Dennis Ritchie
share his memories of the development of C; and HOPL-III attendees will hear
Bjarne Stroustrup continue the history of C++ that he began at HOPL-II. This
article traces the history of the HOPL conferences in the hope of inspiring
other ACM SIGs to document the history of additional subfields.

COMMUNICATIONS OF THE ACM May 2007/Vol. 50, No. 5 69

 Table 1. HOPL-I Speakers and Paper Title.

ming language history and environment, novelty, Speaker Paper Table 1. HOPL (I) speakers
development.4 and uniqueness. After J. Backus and paper titles.
The History of FORTRAN I, II, and III
Figure 1. The Tower of Babel
as depicted on the cover of
Sammet’s activities resulted significant discussion, A.J. Perlis The American Side of the Development of ALGOL
2. Contributions of Lan-
the January 1961 issue of in an invitation to teach a the committee identified P. Naur The European Side of the Last Phase of the Development guages
of ALGOL
Communications of the continuing education class at the 13 languages listed 3. Mistakes or Desired
ACM.
the University of California at in the accompanying J. McCarthy History of LISP Changes
Los Angeles. While at UCLA, sidebar “Rationale for J.E. Sammet The Early History of COBOL 4. Problems
Michael Melchinoff, chair of the Languages Included D.T. Ross Origins of the APT Language for Automatically Programmed Tools

the computer science in the first HOPL.” 6

J.I. Schwartz The Development of JOVIAL Implications for Current
department, asked Sammet In order to fully docu- G. Gordon The Development of General Purpose Simulation System (GPSS) and Future Languages
about the creation of ment the development K. Nygaard The Development of the SIMULA Language 1. Direct Influence
COBOL: “Why did of these languages—and C.L. Baker JOSS—JOHNNIAC Open-Shop System
2. Indirect Influence
COBOL have a COM- believing that non-histo-
T.E. Kurtz BASIC
PUTE verb in addition to rians needed guidance to The first ACM SIG-
G. Radin The Early History and Characteristics of PL/I
ADD, SUBTRACT, MUL- write good history—the PLAN History of Program-
TIPLY and DIVIDE verbs?” Program Committee R.E. Griswold A History of the SNOBOL Programming Language ming Languages Conference
and “Why were COBOL drafted 82 specific ques- and
K.E. Iverson
A.D. Falkoff
The Evolution of APL was held on June 1–3, 1978
data names limited to 30 tions to guide authors in Los Angeles, CA. The
characters?”5 and assist in identifying important facts and ideas. keynote speaker was Grace Murray Hopper, who iden-
Some years after visiting The list here shows the top-level headings for these tified herself as the third “coder” on the Bureau of
UCLA, Sammet decided it questions.7 Bergin tableOrdnance 1 (5/07)Computation Project at Harvard. Hopper
would be interesting to have used her experiences to tell the story of program lan-
a conference in which a per- Background guage evolution: developing subroutines to be shared
son who had been a key per- 1. Basic Facts about Project with her MARK I colleagues in
son in the creation of Organization and 1944, coding in octal on the
programming languages People BINAC in 1949, and developing
talked about how the lan- 2. Costs and Schedules the first compiler for the A-O pro-
THE BEGINNING guage was created. Sammet sought and received 3. Basic Facts about Docu- gramming language in 1952. After
The prime mover for the inaugural the support of SIGPLAN and also served as mentation relating her work to the other efforts
HOPL conference was Jean E. General and Program Committee Chair; 4. Language/Systems Known at the time, Hopper identified two
Sammet. Long a student of pro- John A.N. Lee served as Administrative at the Time goals for programming languages: to
gramming languages, Sammet Chairman and designed the conference 5. Intended Purposes and create better programs with less
served on the CODASYL Lan- logo (as illustrated in Figure 2). Users effort and to allow non-specialists—
guage Structure Group in 1960 6. Source and Motivation such as engineers and mathemati-
and was a charter member of the THE FIRST HOPL CONFERENCE, cians—to use computers to solve
USASI X3.4 Committee on Pro- LOS ANGELES, CA, 1978 Rationale of Content of the problems. These goals led the indus-
gramming Languages. In 1961, Sam- The purpose of HOPL was to examine the Language try to develop numerous languages
met oversaw the creation of the early development of selected programming 1. Environment Factors for solving a wide range of prob-
FORMAC language for IBM.1 Sammet Figure 2. The languages—with an emphasis on the technical 2. Functions to be Pro- lems, and it is these languages that
was also cataloging languages and pub- HOPL logo aspects of language design and creation. grammed were the focus of HOPL.
lishing numerous “rosters” of lan- from www. The Program Committee set specific and general 3. Language Design Principles A glance at Table 1 shows the pio-
guages.2 A major outgrowth of this tennessee.cc.
vt.edu/~hopl
criteria for inclusion of a language. The specific 4. Language Definition neering nature of HOPL. Each
research was PROGRAMMING LAN- requirements were that the language must have been 5. Concepts about Other Lan- speaker played an important techni-
GUAGES: History and Fundamentals.3 This was the created, and in use, by 1967; remain in use in 1977; guages cal role in the development of these
first book to take a comprehensive look at program- and must have had considerable influence on the field 6. Influence of Non-technical early programming languages.
of computing. All papers would be by invitation. Factors Moreover, these languages served as
The general criteria—which did not have to the foundation for all subsequent
1FORMAC (FORmula Manipulation Compiler) was the first language for symbolic
mathematics that had significant use. See Jean E. Sammet’s “The Beginning and apply to each language—were usage, influence on A Posteriori Evaluation programming language develop-
Development of FORMAC,” in History of Programming Languages, Thomas J. Bergin language design, overall impact on the computing 1. Meeting of Objectives ment.
and Richard G. Gibson, Eds. ACM Press/Addison-Wesley, 1996, 429–469.
2See for example, Jean E. Sammet’s “Roster of Programming Languages” in Comput- Although there were 13 languages
ers and Automation, (Nov. 1970), 6-11 and “Roster of Programming Languages for
4An earlier book, Programming Systems and Languages, edited by Saul Rosen, 6
identified by the Program Commit-
1976–77” in ACM SIGPLAN Notices, (Nov. 1978), 56–85; doi.acm.org/ See Richard L. Wexelblat’s History of Programming
10.1145/953777.953783. McGraw-Hill, 1967, was a compilation of articles on programming languages, com- Languages, Academic Press, New York, 1981.
3Jean E. Sammet. PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES: History and Fundamentals, pilers, translators, languages for processing lists and strings, and operating systems; the 7”Conference Organization: General Questions Figure 3. The final program from
Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, 1969. (Interestingly, the dust jacket contained majority of the articles were from Communications of the ACM. Asked of All Authors.” The entire set of questions is HOPL-II.
another version of the Tower of Babel using programming languages.) 5Oral history of Jean E. Sammet by Thomas J. Bergin (Spring 2006). in Appendix B.

70 May 2007/Vol. 50, No. 5 COMMUNICATIONS OF THE ACM COMMUNICATIONS OF THE ACM May 2007/Vol. 50, No. 5 71
 Table 1. HOPL-I Speakers and Paper Title.

ming language history and environment, novelty, Speaker Paper Table 1. HOPL (I) speakers
development.4 and uniqueness. After J. Backus and paper titles.
The History of FORTRAN I, II, and III
Figure 1. The Tower of Babel
as depicted on the cover of
Sammet’s activities resulted significant discussion, A.J. Perlis The American Side of the Development of ALGOL
2. Contributions of Lan-
the January 1961 issue of in an invitation to teach a the committee identified P. Naur The European Side of the Last Phase of the Development guages
of ALGOL
Communications of the continuing education class at the 13 languages listed 3. Mistakes or Desired
ACM.
the University of California at in the accompanying J. McCarthy History of LISP Changes
Los Angeles. While at UCLA, sidebar “Rationale for J.E. Sammet The Early History of COBOL 4. Problems
Michael Melchinoff, chair of the Languages Included D.T. Ross Origins of the APT Language for Automatically Programmed Tools

the computer science in the first HOPL.” 6

J.I. Schwartz The Development of JOVIAL Implications for Current
department, asked Sammet In order to fully docu- G. Gordon The Development of General Purpose Simulation System (GPSS) and Future Languages
about the creation of ment the development K. Nygaard The Development of the SIMULA Language 1. Direct Influence
COBOL: “Why did of these languages—and C.L. Baker JOSS—JOHNNIAC Open-Shop System
2. Indirect Influence
COBOL have a COM- believing that non-histo-
T.E. Kurtz BASIC
PUTE verb in addition to rians needed guidance to The first ACM SIG-
G. Radin The Early History and Characteristics of PL/I
ADD, SUBTRACT, MUL- write good history—the PLAN History of Program-
TIPLY and DIVIDE verbs?” Program Committee R.E. Griswold A History of the SNOBOL Programming Language ming Languages Conference
and “Why were COBOL drafted 82 specific ques- and
K.E. Iverson
A.D. Falkoff
The Evolution of APL was held on June 1–3, 1978
data names limited to 30 tions to guide authors in Los Angeles, CA. The
characters?”5 and assist in identifying important facts and ideas. keynote speaker was Grace Murray Hopper, who iden-
Some years after visiting The list here shows the top-level headings for these tified herself as the third “coder” on the Bureau of
UCLA, Sammet decided it questions.7 Bergin tableOrdnance 1 (5/07)Computation Project at Harvard. Hopper
would be interesting to have used her experiences to tell the story of program lan-
a conference in which a per- Background guage evolution: developing subroutines to be shared
son who had been a key per- 1. Basic Facts about Project with her MARK I colleagues in
son in the creation of Organization and 1944, coding in octal on the
programming languages People BINAC in 1949, and developing
talked about how the lan- 2. Costs and Schedules the first compiler for the A-O pro-
THE BEGINNING guage was created. Sammet sought and received 3. Basic Facts about Docu- gramming language in 1952. After
The prime mover for the inaugural the support of SIGPLAN and also served as mentation relating her work to the other efforts
HOPL conference was Jean E. General and Program Committee Chair; 4. Language/Systems Known at the time, Hopper identified two
Sammet. Long a student of pro- John A.N. Lee served as Administrative at the Time goals for programming languages: to
gramming languages, Sammet Chairman and designed the conference 5. Intended Purposes and create better programs with less
served on the CODASYL Lan- logo (as illustrated in Figure 2). Users effort and to allow non-specialists—
guage Structure Group in 1960 6. Source and Motivation such as engineers and mathemati-
and was a charter member of the THE FIRST HOPL CONFERENCE, cians—to use computers to solve
USASI X3.4 Committee on Pro- LOS ANGELES, CA, 1978 Rationale of Content of the problems. These goals led the indus-
gramming Languages. In 1961, Sam- The purpose of HOPL was to examine the Language try to develop numerous languages
met oversaw the creation of the early development of selected programming 1. Environment Factors for solving a wide range of prob-
FORMAC language for IBM.1 Sammet Figure 2. The languages—with an emphasis on the technical 2. Functions to be Pro- lems, and it is these languages that
was also cataloging languages and pub- HOPL logo aspects of language design and creation. grammed were the focus of HOPL.
lishing numerous “rosters” of lan- from www. The Program Committee set specific and general 3. Language Design Principles A glance at Table 1 shows the pio-
guages.2 A major outgrowth of this tennessee.cc.
vt.edu/~hopl
criteria for inclusion of a language. The specific 4. Language Definition neering nature of HOPL. Each
research was PROGRAMMING LAN- requirements were that the language must have been 5. Concepts about Other Lan- speaker played an important techni-
GUAGES: History and Fundamentals.3 This was the created, and in use, by 1967; remain in use in 1977; guages cal role in the development of these
first book to take a comprehensive look at program- and must have had considerable influence on the field 6. Influence of Non-technical early programming languages.
of computing. All papers would be by invitation. Factors Moreover, these languages served as
The general criteria—which did not have to the foundation for all subsequent
1FORMAC (FORmula Manipulation Compiler) was the first language for symbolic
mathematics that had significant use. See Jean E. Sammet’s “The Beginning and apply to each language—were usage, influence on A Posteriori Evaluation programming language develop-
Development of FORMAC,” in History of Programming Languages, Thomas J. Bergin language design, overall impact on the computing 1. Meeting of Objectives ment.
and Richard G. Gibson, Eds. ACM Press/Addison-Wesley, 1996, 429–469.
2See for example, Jean E. Sammet’s “Roster of Programming Languages” in Comput- Although there were 13 languages
ers and Automation, (Nov. 1970), 6-11 and “Roster of Programming Languages for
4An earlier book, Programming Systems and Languages, edited by Saul Rosen, 6
identified by the Program Commit-
1976–77” in ACM SIGPLAN Notices, (Nov. 1978), 56–85; doi.acm.org/ See Richard L. Wexelblat’s History of Programming
10.1145/953777.953783. McGraw-Hill, 1967, was a compilation of articles on programming languages, com- Languages, Academic Press, New York, 1981.
3Jean E. Sammet. PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES: History and Fundamentals, pilers, translators, languages for processing lists and strings, and operating systems; the 7”Conference Organization: General Questions Figure 3. The final program from
Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, 1969. (Interestingly, the dust jacket contained majority of the articles were from Communications of the ACM. Asked of All Authors.” The entire set of questions is HOPL-II.
another version of the Tower of Babel using programming languages.) 5Oral history of Jean E. Sammet by Thomas J. Bergin (Spring 2006). in Appendix B.

70 May 2007/Vol. 50, No. 5 COMMUNICATIONS OF THE ACM COMMUNICATIONS OF THE ACM May 2007/Vol. 50, No. 5 71
 Table 2 HOPL-II Speakers and Paper Titles.

Speaker Paper www.tennessee.cc.vt.edu/~hopl/, a Web site created

by John A.N. Lee.
C.H. Lindsey
N. Wirth
A History of ALGOL 68

Recollections About the Development of Pascal

The formal papers, with the exception of the As we excitedly look to the future to see what
P.B. Hansen Monitors and Concurrent Pascal, a Personal History
paper on JOSS, were published as preprints and new technology will bring, we need to remember that WE STAND
available at the conference.9 The preprints contained
W. Whitaker ADA --The Project
extensive language summaries—which the attendees ON MANY SETS OF SHOULDERS TO SEE THAT FUTURE!
G.L. Steele The Evolution of Lisp
And R.P. Gabriel were encouraged to read before the sessions. Since
A. Colmerauer The Birth of Prolog
HOPL had only one track, all participants attended
and P. Roussel all the sessions, giving the conference a special feel. early history of specific languages, the committee The proceedings were published in 1996 as History
R. E. Nance A History of Discrete Event Simulation Languages In addition to the sessions, there was a banquet wanted papers on the evolution of languages, the his- of Programming Languages, edited by Thomas J.
J.E. Sammet The Beginning and Development of FORMAC hosted by Bernard Galler. Some of the more memo- tory of language features and concepts, and papers on Bergin and Richard G. Gibson.14
B. Liskov A History of CLU rable comments appeared in the Annals of the His- classes of languages such as application-oriented and The conference banquet was the first evening, and
A. C. Kay The Early History of Smalltalk
tory of Computing, including Grace Hopper’s famous paradigm-oriented languages. Rationale for the Languages Included in the First HOPL Conference
“bug” story.10 HOPL was captured in History of Pro- Preliminary ideas had to be
R.E. and M.T. Griswold History of the Icon Language Rationale for the Languages Included in the First HOPL Conference
gramming Languages edited by Richard L. Wexelblat. documented by 1982 and the
D.R. Colburn, The Evolution of Forth
C.H. Moore and language in use or being Language Rationale
E. D. Rather HOPL II, CAMBRIDGE, MA, 1993 taught by 1985. Following the ALGOL 60 An obvious landmark in technical development of programming languages, both in terms of the
D. Ritchie The Development of the C Programming Language Several years after HOPL, Sammet and Lee began successful plan from HOPL, concepts introduced and the first recognized use of formal notation for syntax; most theoretical
and much practical language and compiler work since 1960 has been based on ALGOL.
B. Stroustrup A History of C++ thinking about a second conference, with the intent the Committee provided
APL Its unique approach and character set resulted in frequent cryptic “one-liner” programs; its
Note: languages in bold font were invited papers of building on what had been learned at HOPL and authors with sets of questions effective initial implementation—as an interactive system—make it important.
Table 3. HOPL-III
expanding its Authors andcoverage.
scope and Paper Titles.
In 1990, SIG- to guide them in developing
Table 2. HOPL-II speakers and titles. APT A representative of a class of languages known as special-purpose languages; APT was used to
PLAN authorized the Second History of Program- their papers and presenta- program machine tools.
tee, 14 papers were written and tions. In addition, Michael S. BASIC The simplest and one of the most widely used languages; was the first language of students at
various educational levels; widely implemented on many computers.
presented, with separate papers on Speaker Paper Mahoney, the conference his-
the development Bergin table 2in(5/07)
of ALGOL B. Stroustrup Evolving a Language in and for the Real World, C++ 1991–2006 torian, wrote an essay, “What COBOL Widely used in business data processing; unique English-like style; widely implemented.

the U.S. and ALGOL 60 in N. Wirth A History of Modula-2 and Oberon Makes History?” which was FORTRAN Oldest general language in use and the first to become widely used; opened the doors of
computing to large numbers of scientists and engineers.
Europe. The differing viewpoints D. Harel Statecharts in the Making: A Personal Account
sent to each author along with
GPSS Earliest simulation language; block diagram style and wide usage make it important; introduced
of the U.S. and European develop- R. Ierusamimschy, The Evolution of Lua
the reviews and comments on numerous simulation concepts in a unique language.
ers resulted in some interesting L.H. de Figueiredo, the first drafts.11 JOSS First language designed to be used in an interactive environment; spawned many dialects.
exchanges during the Q&A period and W. Celes HOPL-II was held Apr. JOVIAL Outgrowth of ALGOL 58; first language to include significant numeric, logical and data handling
that followed the presentations. J. Armstrong A History of Erlang
20–23, 1993, in Cambridge, capabilities.
Attendees were treated to a rare P.S.P.Hudak, J. Hughes,
Jones, and P. Wadler
The History of Haskell MA. Frederick P. Brooks, Jr.,
12
LISP The concepts in LISP are unlike those of any other language; widely used for artificial intelligence
and symbolic mathematical work.
opportunity to hear from, ask provided a keynote address on
B.B. Kristensen, The When, Why and Why Not of the BETA Programming Language PL/I First language to attempt to provide adequate facilities for scientific computation, business data
questions of, and rub elbows with, O.L. Madsen and “Language Design as Design.” processing and systems programming in one language; first of the really large languages.
the pioneers in the field. Indeed, B. Møller-Pedersen Brooks began by observing SIMULA Added simulation capabilities to ALGOL 60 and introduced the concepts of objects and classes—
not all of the pioneers were speak- L. Snyder The Design and Development of ZPL that the goals and require- on which much current theoretical work in data abstraction has been built; widely implemented.
ers; many members of the A.P. Black,
N. Hutchinson, E. Jul
The Development of the Emerald Programming Language ments of most projects change SNOBOL Widely used string manipulation language; widely implemented.
audience made significant contri- and M. Levy during the design process and
butions to early languages and K. Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of High-Performance FORTRAN: An Historical Object thus are poorly reflected in the resulting design. The Bernard Galler again served as the Master of Cere-
contributed to the conference by C. Koelbel, and
H. Zima
Lesson
external environment also changes, with additional monies.15 After Robert F. Rosin explained his being
their questions and ad hoc com- W.R. Cook AppleScript
negative results. After examining the rationale for acknowledged in The C Programming Language,
ments. From the vantage point of D. Ungar and R.B. Smith Self
good language design, Brooks gave these recommen- Jean BerginSammet told oftable
sidebar her shock (5/07) when an IBM visitor
30+ years, HOPL was an incredi- dations to language designers: design a language, asked why her employees were discussing “sex” in the
ble gift to the computer commu- don’t just hack one up; study and use other people’s office. It seems that FORMAC routines were identi-
nity from some of its brightest Table 3. HOPL-III ming Languages Conference (HOPL-II) with Lee as designs; design top-down; know the application fied by “FMC” plus three letters to indicate the sub-
stars. Indeed, Fred Brooks com- authors and paper Conference Chairman and Sammet as Program well; and iterate the design with independent test routine. Thus, the subroutine for Symbolic
titles.
mented that “The best thing about Committee
BerginChair.
table 3 (5/07) problems. EXpression was logically referred to as “FMCSEX.”
this conference (was) its character The HOPL-II Program Committee wanted con- Since it had been 15 years since HOPL, Jean E. The programmers dropped FMC from their discus-
set!”8 Readers can hear excerpts of the presentations tributed as well as invited papers. In addition to the Sammet reviewed language developments between
(along with transparencies and photographs) at HOPL and HOPL-II, and conference historian, 13See portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=234286.1057808.
14Thomas J. Bergin and Richard G. Gibson. A History of Programming Languages—
9Richard L. Wexelblat, Ed., “Pre-Prints—History of Programming Languages Con- Michael S. Mahoney, discussed “Making History.”13 II. ACM Press/Addison-Wesley, 1996; Table of contents is available at
ference.” ACM SIGPLAN Notices, (Aug. 1978); doi.acm.org/10.1145/ portal.acm.org/toc.cfm?id=154766.
8Annals of the History of Computing, (July 1979), contains two reviews of the HOPL 960118.808394. 15Thomas J. Bergin and Richard J. Gibson. Supplemental Material from HOPL II:
Conference by Nancy Stern and James J. Horning, 68–71; the Brooks quotation is on 10See “Anecdotes,” Annals of the History of Computing (July 1981), 283–286 (Note: 11See www.princeton.edu/~mike/articles/miscellany/whatmakeshist.pdf. Conference Banquet. SIGPLAN Notices (Nov. 1996), 9–20; doi.acm.org/10.1145/
p. 69. The creation of Annals was announced at the end of the HOPL conference. Galler also served as the first editor-in-chief of the Annals). 12Preprints were issued as the March 1993 issue of ACM SIGPLAN Notices. 240964.1198155.

72 May 2007/Vol. 50, No. 5 COMMUNICATIONS OF THE ACM COMMUNICATIONS OF THE ACM May 2007/Vol. 50, No. 5 73
 Table 2 HOPL-II Speakers and Paper Titles.

Speaker Paper www.tennessee.cc.vt.edu/~hopl/, a Web site created

by John A.N. Lee.
C.H. Lindsey
N. Wirth
A History of ALGOL 68

Recollections About the Development of Pascal

The formal papers, with the exception of the As we excitedly look to the future to see what
P.B. Hansen Monitors and Concurrent Pascal, a Personal History
paper on JOSS, were published as preprints and new technology will bring, we need to remember that WE STAND
available at the conference.9 The preprints contained
W. Whitaker ADA --The Project
extensive language summaries—which the attendees ON MANY SETS OF SHOULDERS TO SEE THAT FUTURE!
G.L. Steele The Evolution of Lisp
And R.P. Gabriel were encouraged to read before the sessions. Since
A. Colmerauer The Birth of Prolog
HOPL had only one track, all participants attended
and P. Roussel all the sessions, giving the conference a special feel. early history of specific languages, the committee The proceedings were published in 1996 as History
R. E. Nance A History of Discrete Event Simulation Languages In addition to the sessions, there was a banquet wanted papers on the evolution of languages, the his- of Programming Languages, edited by Thomas J.
J.E. Sammet The Beginning and Development of FORMAC hosted by Bernard Galler. Some of the more memo- tory of language features and concepts, and papers on Bergin and Richard G. Gibson.14
B. Liskov A History of CLU rable comments appeared in the Annals of the His- classes of languages such as application-oriented and The conference banquet was the first evening, and
A. C. Kay The Early History of Smalltalk
tory of Computing, including Grace Hopper’s famous paradigm-oriented languages. Rationale for the Languages Included in the First HOPL Conference
“bug” story.10 HOPL was captured in History of Pro- Preliminary ideas had to be
R.E. and M.T. Griswold History of the Icon Language Rationale for the Languages Included in the First HOPL Conference
gramming Languages edited by Richard L. Wexelblat. documented by 1982 and the
D.R. Colburn, The Evolution of Forth
C.H. Moore and language in use or being Language Rationale
E. D. Rather HOPL II, CAMBRIDGE, MA, 1993 taught by 1985. Following the ALGOL 60 An obvious landmark in technical development of programming languages, both in terms of the
D. Ritchie The Development of the C Programming Language Several years after HOPL, Sammet and Lee began successful plan from HOPL, concepts introduced and the first recognized use of formal notation for syntax; most theoretical
and much practical language and compiler work since 1960 has been based on ALGOL.
B. Stroustrup A History of C++ thinking about a second conference, with the intent the Committee provided
APL Its unique approach and character set resulted in frequent cryptic “one-liner” programs; its
Note: languages in bold font were invited papers of building on what had been learned at HOPL and authors with sets of questions effective initial implementation—as an interactive system—make it important.
Table 3. HOPL-III
expanding its Authors andcoverage.
scope and Paper Titles.
In 1990, SIG- to guide them in developing
Table 2. HOPL-II speakers and titles. APT A representative of a class of languages known as special-purpose languages; APT was used to
PLAN authorized the Second History of Program- their papers and presenta- program machine tools.
tee, 14 papers were written and tions. In addition, Michael S. BASIC The simplest and one of the most widely used languages; was the first language of students at
various educational levels; widely implemented on many computers.
presented, with separate papers on Speaker Paper Mahoney, the conference his-
the development Bergin table 2in(5/07)
of ALGOL B. Stroustrup Evolving a Language in and for the Real World, C++ 1991–2006 torian, wrote an essay, “What COBOL Widely used in business data processing; unique English-like style; widely implemented.

the U.S. and ALGOL 60 in N. Wirth A History of Modula-2 and Oberon Makes History?” which was FORTRAN Oldest general language in use and the first to become widely used; opened the doors of
computing to large numbers of scientists and engineers.
Europe. The differing viewpoints D. Harel Statecharts in the Making: A Personal Account
sent to each author along with
GPSS Earliest simulation language; block diagram style and wide usage make it important; introduced
of the U.S. and European develop- R. Ierusamimschy, The Evolution of Lua
the reviews and comments on numerous simulation concepts in a unique language.
ers resulted in some interesting L.H. de Figueiredo, the first drafts.11 JOSS First language designed to be used in an interactive environment; spawned many dialects.
exchanges during the Q&A period and W. Celes HOPL-II was held Apr. JOVIAL Outgrowth of ALGOL 58; first language to include significant numeric, logical and data handling
that followed the presentations. J. Armstrong A History of Erlang
20–23, 1993, in Cambridge, capabilities.
Attendees were treated to a rare P.S.P.Hudak, J. Hughes,
Jones, and P. Wadler
The History of Haskell MA. Frederick P. Brooks, Jr.,
12
LISP The concepts in LISP are unlike those of any other language; widely used for artificial intelligence
and symbolic mathematical work.
opportunity to hear from, ask provided a keynote address on
B.B. Kristensen, The When, Why and Why Not of the BETA Programming Language PL/I First language to attempt to provide adequate facilities for scientific computation, business data
questions of, and rub elbows with, O.L. Madsen and “Language Design as Design.” processing and systems programming in one language; first of the really large languages.
the pioneers in the field. Indeed, B. Møller-Pedersen Brooks began by observing SIMULA Added simulation capabilities to ALGOL 60 and introduced the concepts of objects and classes—
not all of the pioneers were speak- L. Snyder The Design and Development of ZPL that the goals and require- on which much current theoretical work in data abstraction has been built; widely implemented.
ers; many members of the A.P. Black,
N. Hutchinson, E. Jul
The Development of the Emerald Programming Language ments of most projects change SNOBOL Widely used string manipulation language; widely implemented.
audience made significant contri- and M. Levy during the design process and
butions to early languages and K. Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of High-Performance FORTRAN: An Historical Object thus are poorly reflected in the resulting design. The Bernard Galler again served as the Master of Cere-
contributed to the conference by C. Koelbel, and
H. Zima
Lesson
external environment also changes, with additional monies.15 After Robert F. Rosin explained his being
their questions and ad hoc com- W.R. Cook AppleScript
negative results. After examining the rationale for acknowledged in The C Programming Language,
ments. From the vantage point of D. Ungar and R.B. Smith Self
good language design, Brooks gave these recommen- Jean BerginSammet told oftable
sidebar her shock (5/07) when an IBM visitor
30+ years, HOPL was an incredi- dations to language designers: design a language, asked why her employees were discussing “sex” in the
ble gift to the computer commu- don’t just hack one up; study and use other people’s office. It seems that FORMAC routines were identi-
nity from some of its brightest Table 3. HOPL-III ming Languages Conference (HOPL-II) with Lee as designs; design top-down; know the application fied by “FMC” plus three letters to indicate the sub-
stars. Indeed, Fred Brooks com- authors and paper Conference Chairman and Sammet as Program well; and iterate the design with independent test routine. Thus, the subroutine for Symbolic
titles.
mented that “The best thing about Committee
BerginChair.
table 3 (5/07) problems. EXpression was logically referred to as “FMCSEX.”
this conference (was) its character The HOPL-II Program Committee wanted con- Since it had been 15 years since HOPL, Jean E. The programmers dropped FMC from their discus-
set!”8 Readers can hear excerpts of the presentations tributed as well as invited papers. In addition to the Sammet reviewed language developments between
(along with transparencies and photographs) at HOPL and HOPL-II, and conference historian, 13See portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=234286.1057808.
14Thomas J. Bergin and Richard G. Gibson. A History of Programming Languages—
9Richard L. Wexelblat, Ed., “Pre-Prints—History of Programming Languages Con- Michael S. Mahoney, discussed “Making History.”13 II. ACM Press/Addison-Wesley, 1996; Table of contents is available at
ference.” ACM SIGPLAN Notices, (Aug. 1978); doi.acm.org/10.1145/ portal.acm.org/toc.cfm?id=154766.
8Annals of the History of Computing, (July 1979), contains two reviews of the HOPL 960118.808394. 15Thomas J. Bergin and Richard J. Gibson. Supplemental Material from HOPL II:
Conference by Nancy Stern and James J. Horning, 68–71; the Brooks quotation is on 10See “Anecdotes,” Annals of the History of Computing (July 1981), 283–286 (Note: 11See www.princeton.edu/~mike/articles/miscellany/whatmakeshist.pdf. Conference Banquet. SIGPLAN Notices (Nov. 1996), 9–20; doi.acm.org/10.1145/
p. 69. The creation of Annals was announced at the end of the HOPL conference. Galler also served as the first editor-in-chief of the Annals). 12Preprints were issued as the March 1993 issue of ACM SIGPLAN Notices. 240964.1198155.

72 May 2007/Vol. 50, No. 5 COMMUNICATIONS OF THE ACM COMMUNICATIONS OF THE ACM May 2007/Vol. 50, No. 5 73
 HOPL Timeline ence to see the various (and con-
1966 “The Use of English as a Programming Language.” Jean E. Sammet. Communications of the ACM 9, 3 flicting) perspectives and opin-
(Mar. 1966), 228-230; http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/365230.365274. ions of the panel members as well
1967 Saul Rosen, Ed. Programming Systems and Languages. McGraw-Hill, New York. as the audience.
Note: The largest single source of articles is from Communications of the ACM.

1967 “Fundamental Concepts of Programming Languages.” Computers and Automation 16, 2.

HOPL III, SAN DIEGO, CA, 2007
1967 “Roster of Programming Languages.” Jean E. Sammet. Computers and Automation 16, 6, 120-123. In 2004, Barbara Ryder and
1968 “Roster of Programming Languages,” Jean E. Sammet. Computers and Automation 16, 6B, 80-82. Brent Hailpern, both former
1969 “Roster of Programming Languages.” Jean E. Sammet. Computers and Automation 18, 7, 80-82. SIGPLAN Chairs, started the
1969 Jean E. Sammet. Programming Languages: History and Fundamentals. Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ. process for planning HOPL-III,
1970 “Roster of Programming Languages.” Jean E. Sammet. Computers and Automation 19, 6, 6-11.
which would have an open call.
Each HOPL-III paper should
1971 “Roster of Programming Language—1971.” Jean E. Sammet, Computers and Automation 20, 6, 6-13.
detail the early history or evolu-
1972 “Roster of Programming Languages.” Jean E. Sammet. Computers and Automation 21, 6.
tion of a specific programming
1972 “Programming Languages: History and Future.” Jean E. Sammet. Communications of the ACM 15, 7
(July), 601-610; http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/361454.361485
language. Preliminary ideas
should have been documented
1974 “Roster of Programming Languages for 1973.” Jean E. Sammet. Computing Reviews 15, 4 (Apr.), 147-162.
by 1996 and the language in use
1976 “Roster of Programming Languages for 1974-75.” Jean E. Sammet. Communications of the ACM 19, 12
(Dec.), 655-669.
by 1998. HOPL-III will be co-
located with FCRC 2007 (June
1978 “Pre-Prints--History of Programming Languages Conference.” ACM SIGPLAN Notices 13, 8;
http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/960118.808394. 9–16, 2007) and is supported
1978 “Roster of Programming Languages for 1976-77,” Jean E. Sammet. ACM SIGPLAN Notices 13, 11, 56-85; by SIGPLAN and SIGSOFT.
http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/953777.953783. (For more information about
1978 June 1-3, ACM SIGPLAN History of Programming Languages Conference, Los Angeles CA. HOPL III see research.ihost.
1981 Richard Wexelblat. History of Programming Languages. Academic Press, New York. com/hopl.)
1981 “An Overview of High-Level Languages.” Jean E. Sammet. In Advances in Computers, Vol. 20,
Academic Press, New York. REFLECTIONS
1985 “Brief Summary of the Early History of COBOL,” Jean E. Sammet; and “Summary of Changes in More than 8,500 programming
COBOL, 1960-1985,” Jean E. Sammet and Jerome Garfunkle. IEEE Annals of the History of Computing
Special Issue on COBOL 7, 4 (July); http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/MAHC.1985.10033. languages have been created and
1990 Proposal to SIGPLAN for HOPL-II. used since Grace Hopper’s A-0
1991 “Some Approaches to, and Illustrations of, Programming Language History.” Jean E. Sammet. IEEE Annals
compiler.17 As we excitedly look
of the History of Computing 13, 1, 33-50; http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/MAHC.1991.10001. to the future to see what new
1993 “Pre-Prints--History of Programming Languages Conference (HOPL-II).” ACM SIGPLAN Notices 28, 3 (Mar.) technology will bring, we need
1993 April 20-23, ACM Second SIGPLAN History of Programming Languages Conference
to remember that we stand on
(HOPL II), Cambridge, MA. many sets of shoulders to see
1996 Thomas J. Bergin, Jr. and Richard G. Gibson, Jr. History of Programming Languages, that future! For the program-
ACM Press/Addison-Wesley, New York.
ming language community, the
1996 HOPL-II Conference Banquet. SIGPLAN Notices 31, 11 (Nov.), 9-20;
http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/240964.1198155.
HOPL conferences provide a
critical link to that past, and it is
1997 HOPL-II Closing Panel: The History of Programming: Does Our Present Past Have a
Future? SIGPLAN Notices 32, 9 (Sept.), 15-37; http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/270507.270509. hoped that other important
2004 Planning starts for HOPL-III; recruitment of Program Committee. aspects of our discipline will be
2005 Sept. 9-11, first Program Committee meeting in Newark, NJ.
preserved—in similar fashion—
before it is too late to do so. c
2006 Apr. 6-7, second Program Committee meeting in Newark, NJ.

2007 June 9-10, Third ACM SIGPLAN History of Programming Languages Conference Thomas J. (Tim) Bergin
(HOPL-III), San Diego, CA.
([email protected]) is a professor of
--By Thomas J. (Tim) Bergin computer science and information systems
at American University, Washington, DC.
sions of all subroutines!
HOPL-II ended on a rousing note with a panel of
This article is available at doi.acm.org/10.1145/1230819.1230841.
language designers Bergin
presided over bytable
timeline Michael
(5/07)
Mahoney. “The History of Programming: Does
16

Our Present Past Have a Future?” allowed the audi- © 2007 ACM 0001-0782/07/0500 $5.00
16Tim Bergin, “HOPL II—Closing Panel: The History of Programming: Does Our 17Diarmuid Pigott has created “HOPL: an interactive Roster of Programming Lan-
Present Past Have a Future?” SIGPLAN Notices (Sept. 1997), 15–37; guages” at hopl.murdoch.edu.au/home.prx. This site contains information on 8,512
doi.acm.org/10.1145/270507.270509. languages and 17,837 bibliographic records.

74 May 2007/Vol. 50, No. 5 COMMUNICATIONS OF THE ACM

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