[a member of the program committee asked me to forward the following to this list] Call for Papers HOPL-IV: The Fourth ACM SIGPLAN History of Programming Languages Conference June 2020 (to be collocated with PLDI 2020) The goal of the History of Programming Languages conference series is to produce an accurate historical record of programming language design, development, and philosophy. In 1978, at the first History of Programming Language Conference (HOPL), papers were presented that discussed the development and evolution of thirteen computer programming languages, the people who participated in that work, and the context in which it was undertaken. In 1993, HOPL-II contained fourteen papers on the genesis and evolution of programming languages and programming concepts. In 2007, HOPL-III had twelve papers describing thirteen more languages and their origins, as well as the retrospective multimedia keynote presentation "50 in 50". It is now time for HOPL-IV, to be collocated with PLDI 2020. Whereas papers at previous HOPL conferences focused on single programming languages or a small set of related languages, for HOPL-IV the committee also encourages submissions that discuss and analyze the historical development of language features, design themes, or other strong influences on the direction of programming language design, implementation, and usage. A HOPL-IV paper that is about a single specific language should detail the early history or evolution of that language and the motivation for creating a new language; ideas about the language should have been documented by 2009 and the language should have been widely used by 2011. A HOPL-IV paper that addresses a language or language family already described in a previous HOPL conference should provide substantial new detail about language evolution, development and standardization activities, new dialects and implementations, significant publications, applications, user groups, and other technical and social consequences. A HOPL-IV paper about a more general historical theme or trend should cover a span of at least twenty years. The Program Committee will work closely with prospective authors to help ensure that both the content and the presentation of all the papers are of high quality. As is customary for HOPL, there will be two rounds of careful reviewing. The first round will select the papers for the conference (conditional acceptance); the second round will polish the papers and ensure that they meet the requirements for technical accuracy, historical completeness, and clarity. For each selected paper, a member of the Program Committee will be assigned as a ``shepherd'' to ensure that intermediate drafts are carefully reviewed and that the recommendations of reviewers are addressed. A detailed set of Author Guidelines and Instructions will be posted at the HOPL-IV website:http://hopl4.sigplan.org. Because of the complex nature of the history of programming languages, there will be no a priori upper bound on the length of submitted papers---authors should strive for completeness. We strongly recommend that prospective authors take a look at papers presented at previous HOPL conferences to get an idea of appropriate length, content, and organization. The website http://research.ihost.com/hopl/HOPL.html has information about past HOPL conferences and links to their proceedings. As usual for SIGPLAN-sponsored conferences, papers awaiting acceptance to any other conference or journal are not eligible for submission to HOPL-IV. If a closely related paper has been submitted elsewhere, the HOPL-IV chairs must be notified. Authors of accepted papers are expected to make presentations (to be recorded in video form) at the conference. Final papers and video recordings of the presentations will be placed in the ACM Digital Library. PC committee member policy: There will be no restriction on submissions from PC members. The program chairs/general chairs may not submit papers. SIGPLAN requires that PC papers be held to a higher standard than other papers. For HOPL the criterion for acceptability of a PC paper is a clear accept. Key Dates: July 31, 2018: one-page abstracts due from authors August 31, 2018: complete first drafts due from authors February 15, 2019: notification and in-depth reviews to authors August 30, 2019: second-round drafts due from authors January 10, 2020: notification and in-depth reviews to authors March 13, 2020: final copy due from authors June 2020: HOPL-IV conference @PLDI 2020 Authors of accepted papers will be required to sign ACM copyright release forms. Inquiries may be sent tohopl4@sigplan.org (preferred)—or, if that does not work for some reason, toguy.steele@oracle.com andrpg@dreamsongs.com. Conference and Program co-Chairs: Guy L. Steele Jr. Oracle Labs guy.steele@oracle.com Richard P. Gabriel Dream Songs, Inc. & HPI rpg@dreamsongs.com Consulting Historian: Mark Priestley Program Committee: Andrew Black, Portland State University Steve Blackburn, Australian National University Kim Bruce, Pomona College Matthias Felleisen, Northeastern University Brent Hailpern, IBM Research Ralph Johnson, Metafficient Crista Lopes, University of California, Irvine Mira Mezini, TU Darmstadt Ana Milanova, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Jens Palsberg, University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Tomas Petricek, Alan Turing Institute Keshav Pingali, University of Texas at Austin John Reppy, University of Chicago Barbara Ryder, Virginia Tech Sukyoung Ryu, KAIST Yannis Smaragdakis, University of Athens Jean-Baptiste Tristan, Oracle Labs Philip Wadler, University of Edinburgh Stephanie Weirich, University of Pennsylvania Allen Wirfs-Brock, Wirfs-Brock Associates