The Rise and Fall of Extensible Programming Languages

Tomas Petricek

Presented at HaPoC 2023.

The term extensible programming language is not something that would be familiar to programmers and computer scientists today. Yet, in the1960s and 1970s, extensible programming languages were a household name. Two symposia on extensible languages were held in 1969 and 1971; a 1974 paper author counted 27 extensible languages proposed by 55 people; Harvard caried out an Extensible Languages Research Program and "A Survey of Extensible Programming Languages" reviewing the work in the area was published in 1974. What were extensible programming languages, where did the term go and why?

Draft and more information

• Download the HaPoC extended abstract (PDF)
• Check out HaPoC 2023 talk slides (online)

Comments are welcome!

If you have any comments, suggestions or related ideas, I'll be happy to hear from you! Send me an email at tomas@tomasp.net or get in touch via Twitter at @tomaspetricek.