SIGPLAN

SIGPLAN is the Association for Computing Machinery's Special Interest Group (SIG) on programming languages. This SIG explores programming language concepts and tools, focusing on design, implementation, practice, and theory. Its members are programming language developers, educators, implementers, researchers, theoreticians, and users.

Conferences

Principles of Programming Languages (POPL)
Programming Language Design and Implementation (PLDI)
International Symposium on Memory Management (ISMM)
Languages, Compilers, and Tools for Embedded Systems (LCTES)
Symposium on Principles and Practice of Parallel Programming (PPoPP)
International Conference on Functional Programming (ICFP)
Systems, Programming, Languages, and Applications: Software for Humanity (SPLASH)
Object-Oriented Programming, Systems, Languages, and Applications (OOPSLA)
History of Programming Languages (HOPL)
Dynamic Languages Symposium (DLS)

Associated journals

Newsletters

ACM SIGPLAN Notices - ISSN 1558-1160 ISSN 0362-1340 - Home page at ACM
Fortran Forum - ISSN 1061-7264 ISSN 1931-1311
Lisp Pointers (final issue 1995) - ISSN 1045-3563
OOPS Messenger (1990–1996) - ISSN 1558-0253 ISSN 1055-6400

Awards

Programming Languages Achievement Award

Recognizes an individual or individuals who has made a significant and lasting contribution to the field of programming languages. ^[2]^[3]

2024: Keshav Pingali
2023: Kathryn S. McKinley
2022: Xavier Leroy
2021: Bob Harper
2020: Hans-J. Boehm
2019: Alex Aiken
2017: Thomas W. Reps
2016: Simon Peyton Jones
2015: Luca Cardelli
2014: Neil D. Jones
2013: Patrick Cousot and Radhia Cousot
2012: Matthias Felleisen
2011: Tony Hoare
2010: Gordon Plotkin
2009: Rod Burstall
2008: Barbara Liskov
2007: Niklaus Wirth
2006: Ron Cytron, Jeanne Ferrante, Barry K. Rosen, Mark Wegman, and Kenneth Zadeck
2005: Erich Gamma, Richard Helm, Ralph Johnson, John Vlissides
2004: John Backus
2003: John C. Reynolds
2002: John McCarthy
2001: Robin Milner
2000: Susan Graham
1999: Ken Kennedy
1998: Fran Allen
1997: Guy Steele

Robin Milner Young Researcher Award

Recognizes outstanding contributions by young researchers in the area of programming languages.^[5] The award is named after the computer scientist Robin Milner.

2024: Armando Solar-Lezama
2023: Nate Foster
2022: Viktor Vafeiadis
2021: Emina Torlak
2020: Eran Yahav
2019: Martin Vechev
2018: Ranjit Jhala
2017: Derek Dreyer
2016: Stephanie Weirich
2015: David Walker
2014: Sumit Gulwani
2013: Lars Birkedal
2012: Shriram Krishnamurthi

Programming Languages Software Award

Given to an institution or individual(s) to recognize the development of a software system that has had a significant impact on programming language research, implementations, and tools.^[6]

2024: Rust (programming language)^[7]
2023: OCaml
2022: CompCert^[8]
2021: WebAssembly^[9]
2020: Pin (computer program)^[9]
2019: Scala (programming language)^[10]
2018: Racket (programming language)^[11]
2016: V8 (JavaScript engine)^[11]
2015: Z3 Theorem Prover^[11]
2014: GNU Compiler Collection (GCC)^[11]
2013: Coq proof assistant^[12]
2012: Jikes Research Virtual Machine (RVM)^[13]
2011: Simon Peyton Jones and Simon Marlow (Glasgow Haskell Compiler)^[14]
2010: Chris Lattner (LLVM)^[15]^[16]

SIGPLAN Doctoral Dissertation Award

The full name of this award is the John C. Reynolds Doctoral Dissertation Award, after the computer scientist John C. Reynolds. It is "presented annually to the author of the outstanding doctoral dissertation in the area of Programming Languages."^[17]

2018: Justin Hsu and David Menendez
2017: Ramana Kumar
2016: Shachar Itzhaky and Vilhelm Sjöberg
2015: Mark Batty
2014: Aaron Turon
2013: Patrick Rondon
2012: Dan Marino
2010: Robert L. Bocchino
2009: Akash Lai and William Thies
2008: Michael Bond and Viktor Vafeiadis
2007: Swarat Chaudhuri
2006: Xiangyu Zhang
2005: Sumit Gulwani
2003: Godmar Back
2002: Michael Hicks
2001: Rastislav Bodik

SIGPLAN Distinguished Service Award

2016: Phil Wadler
2015: Dan Grossman
2014: Simon Peyton Jones
2013: Kathleen Fisher
2012: Jens Palsberg
2011: Kathryn S. McKinley
2010: Jack W. Davidson
2009: Mamdouh Ibrahim
2008: Michael Burke
2007: Linda M. Northrop
2006: Hans Boehm
2005: no award made
2004: Ron Cytron
2003: Mary Lou Soffa
2002: Andrew Appel
2001: Barbara G. Ryder
2000: David Wise
1999: Loren Meissner
1998: Brent Hailpern
1997: J.A.N. Lee and Jean E. Sammet
1996: Dick Wexelblat and John Richards

Most Influential PLDI Paper Award

2017 (for 2007): Valgrind: a framework for heavyweight dynamic binary instrumentation, Nicholas Nethercote, Julian Seward
2016 (for 2006): DieHard: probabilistic memory safety for unsafe languages, Emery Berger, Benjamin Zorn
2015 (for 2005): Pin: building customized program analysis tools with dynamic instrumentation, Chi-Keung Luk, Robert Cohn, Robert Muth, Harish Patil, Artur Klauser, Geoff Lowney, Steven Wallace, Vijay Janapa Reddi, and Kim Hazelwood
2014 (for 2004): Scalable Lock-Free Dynamic Memory Allocation, Maged M. Michael
2013 (for 2003): The nesC language: A holistic approach to networked embedded systems, David Gay, Philip Levis, J. Robert von Behren, Matt Welsh, Eric Brewer, and David E. Culler
2012 (for 2002): Extended Static Checking for Java, Cormac Flanagan, K. Rustan M. Leino, Mark Lillibridge, Greg Nelson, James B. Saxe, and Raymie Stata
2011 (for 2001): Automatic predicate abstraction of C programs, Thomas Ball, Rupak Majumdar, Todd Millstein, and Sriram K. Rajamani
2010 (for 2000): Dynamo: A Transparent Dynamic Optimization System, Vasanth Bala, Evelyn Duesterwald, Sanjeev Banerji
2009 (for 1999): A Fast Fourier Transform Compiler, Matteo Frigo
2008 (for 1998): The implementation of the Cilk-5 multithreaded language, Matteo Frigo, Charles E. Leiserson, Keith H. Randall
2007 (for 1997): Exploiting hardware performance counters with flow and context sensitive profiling, Glenn Ammons, Thomas Ball, and James R. Larus
2006 (for 1996): TIL: A Type-Directed Optimizing Compiler for ML, David Tarditi, Greg Morrisett, Perry Cheng, Christopher Stone, Robert Harper, and Peter Lee
2005 (for 1995): Selective Specialization for Object-Oriented Languages, Jeffrey Dean, Craig Chambers, and David Grove
2004 (for 1994): ATOM: a system for building customized program analysis tools, Amitabh Srivastava and Alan Eustace
2003 (for 1993): Space Efficient Conservative Garbage Collection, Hans Boehm
2002 (for 1992): Lazy Code Motion, Jens Knoop, Oliver Rüthing, Bernhard Steffen
2001 (for 1991): A data locality optimizing algorithm, Michael E. Wolf and Monica S. Lam
2000 (for 1990): Profile guided code positioning, Karl Pettis and Robert C. Hansen

Most Influential POPL Paper Award

2018 (for 2008): Multiparty asynchronous session types, Kohei Honda, Nobuko Yoshida, Marco Carbone
2017 (for 2007): JavaScript Instrumentation for Browser Security, Dachuan Yu, Ajay Chander, Nayeem Islam, Igor Serikov
2016 (for 2006): Formal certification of a compiler back-end or: programming a compiler with a proof assistant, Xavier Leroy
2015 (for 2005): Combinators for Bidirectional Tree Transformations: A Linguistic Approach to the View Update Problem, Nate Foster, Michael B. Greenwald, Jonathan T. Moore, Benjamin C. Pierce, Alan Schmitt
2014 (for 2004): Abstractions from proofs, Thomas Henzinger, Ranjit Jhala, Rupak Majumdar, Kenneth McMillan
2013 (for 2003): A real-time garbage collector with low overhead and consistent utilization, David F. Bacon, Perry Cheng, VT Rajan
2012 (for 2002): CCured: Type-Safe Retrofitting of Legacy Code, George C. Necula, Scott McPeak, and Westley Weimer
2011 (for 2001): BI as an Assertion Language for Mutable Data Structures, Samin Ishtiaq and Peter W. O'Hearn
2010 (for 2000): Anytime, Anywhere: Modal Logics for Mobile Ambients, Luca Cardelli and Andrew D. Gordon
2009 (for 1999): JFlow: Practical Mostly-Static Information Flow Control, Andrew C. Myers
2008 (for 1998): From System F to Typed Assembly Language, Greg Morrisett, David Walker, Karl Crary, and Neal Glew
2007 (for 1997): Proof-carrying Code, George Necula
2006 (for 1996): Points-to Analysis in Almost Linear Time, Bjarne Steensgaard
2005 (for 1995): A Language with Distributed Scope, Luca Cardelli
2004 (for 1994): Implementation of the Typed Call-by-Value lambda-calculus using a Stack of Regions, Mads Tofte and Jean-Pierre Talpin
2003 (for 1993): Imperative functional programming, Simon Peyton Jones and Philip Wadler

Most Influential OOPSLA Paper Award

2017 (for 2007): Statistically Rigorous Java Performance Evaluation, Andy Georges, Dries Buytaert, Lieven Eeckhout
2016 (for 2006): The DaCapo benchmarks: Java benchmarking development and analysis, Stephen M. Blackburn, Robin Garner, Chris Hoffmann, Asjad M. Khan, Kathryn S. McKinley, Rotem Bentzur, Amer Diwan, Daniel Feinberg, Daniel Frampton, Samuel Z. Guyer, Martin Hirzel, Antony Hosking, Maria Jump, Han Lee, J. Eliot B. Moss, Aashish Phansalkar, Darko Stefanović, Thomas VanDrunen, Daniel von Dincklage, Ben Wiedermann
2015 (for 2005): X10: An Object-Oriented Approach to Non-Uniform Cluster Computing, Philippe Charles, Christian Grothoff, Vijay Saraswat, Christopher Donawa, Allan Kielstra, Kemal Ebcioglu, Christoph von Praun, and Vivek Sarkar
2014 (for 2004): Mirrors: Design Principles for Meta-level Facilities of Object-Oriented Programming Languages, Gilad Bracha and David Ungar
2013 (for 2003): Language Support for Lightweight Transactions, Tim Harris and Keir Fraser
2012 (for 2002): Reconsidering Custom Memory Allocation, Emery D. Berger, Benjamin G. Zorn, and Kathryn S. McKinley
2010 (for 2000): Adaptive Optimization in the Jalapeño JVM, Matthew Arnold, Stephen Fink, David Grove, Michael Hind, and Peter F. Sweeney
2009 (for 1999): Implementing Jalapeño in Java, Bowen Alpern, C. R. Attanasio, John J. Barton, Anthony Cocchi, Susan Flynn Hummel, Derek Lieber, Ton Ngo, Mark Mergen, Janice C. Shepherd, and Stephen Smith
2008 (for 1998): Ownership Types for Flexible Alias Protection, David G. Clarke, John M. Potter, and James Noble
2007 (for 1997): Call Graph Construction in Object-Oriented Languages, David Grove, Greg DeFouw, Jeffrey Dean, and Craig Chambers
2006 (for 1986–1996):
- Subject Oriented Programming: A Critique of Pure Objects, William Harrison and Harold Ossher
- Concepts and Experiments in Computational Reflection, Pattie Maes
- Self: The Power of Simplicity, David Ungar and Randall B. Smith

Most Influential ICFP Paper Award

2019 (for 2009): Runtime Support for Multicore Haskell: Simon Marlow, Simon Peyton Jones, and Satnam Singh
2009 (for 1999): Haskell and XML: Generic combinators or type-based translation?, Malcolm Wallace and Colin Runciman
2008 (for 1998): Cayenne — a language with dependent types, Lennart Augustsson
2007 (for 1997): Functional Reactive Animation, Conal Elliott and Paul Hudak
2006 (for 1996): Optimality and inefficiency: what isn't a cost model of the lambda calculus?, Julia L. Lawall and Harry G. Mairson