Programming systems and languages 1965-1975

In spite of impressive gains by PL/I, Fortran and Cobol remain the languages in which most of the world's production programs are written and will remain so into the foreseeable future. There is a great deal of theoretical interest in Algol 68 and in extensible languages, but so far at least they have had little practical impact. Problem-oriented languages may very well become the most important language development area in the next five to ten years. In the operating system area all major computer manufacturers set out to produce very ambitious multiprogramming systems, and they all ran into similar problems. A number of university projects, though not directly comparable to those of the manufacturers, have contributed greatly to a better understanding of operating system principles. Important trends include the increased interest in the development of system measurement and evaluation techniques, and increased use of microprogramming for some programming system functions.