HOPL-I - Los Angeles, CA - 1-3 June 1978

The proceedings of the ACM SIGPLAN History of Programming Languages (HOPL) conference are a record, in the words of those who helped make the history, of a baker's dozen of the languages that set the tone of most of today's programming. It is difficult to describe the feeling that prevailed at the conference. There were no parallel sessions.

Some attendees were graduate students, some pioneers, many were practitioners, and there seemed roughly an even division between industrial and academic affiliation. 

The Keynote Address was given by Grace Murray Hopper, Captain, USN, who was present at the birth of the industry and has remained an active participant.

The HOPL-I book contains

1. •The formal paper from the conference proceedings (with some modifications by the authors).
   

2. •A transcript of the formal conference presentation.
   

3. •A transcript of the discussant's presentation. (There were discussants for APL, COBOL, FORTRAN, LISP, PL/I, and SIMULA only.)
   

4. •A transcript of the question and answer session.
   

5. •The full text of questions submitted in writing by the attendees (some with additional answers provided by the author).
   

6. •Authors' biographies.
   

7. •Summaries of the languages.
   

No two speakers are alike and the transcripts of the talks reflect the differences. Some tended to repeat in the oral presentation the material in the formal preprint; others gave almost completely independent talks. In editing the transcripts, no attempt was made to remove redundancy. As far as possible, all that was said was included.

HOPL-I was sponsored by ACM SIGPLAN.