COMMENT ⊗   VALID 00002 PAGES
C REC  PAGE   DESCRIPTION
C00001 00001
C00002 00002	\\M1BASL30\M2BASB30\M3NGR25\M4NGR20
C00008 ENDMK
C⊗;
\\M1BASL30;\M2BASB30;\M3NGR25;\M4NGR20;
\F1\CFebruary 15,1980

Dr. Peter J. Landin
Queen Mary College
Mile End Road
London, E14NS
ENGLAND



Dear Dr. Landin:

\JBefore the deadline for papers draws too near, I would like to
discuss a few other matters concerning the  format of the conference.

First, to bring you up to date: we have space reserved on the Stanford
campus for housing, food services, and conference space. The banquet details
for tuesday night are being completed.
Details for 
publishing the proceedings are being worked out now. John McCarthy
has agreed to give the opening address on August 25, 1980.

Next, several issues have to be discussed. It now turns out that
in August 1980 Stanford will be hosting three LISP-related conferences!
AIM (A I in Medicine) will run August 13 through 15; alas, this conference is
by invitation only. Next,
AAAI (American Association
for Artificial Intelligence) will hold their first conference August 19 through
21; this will be a very large conference --about 1000 people expected.
Finally, our conference will begin with a reception Sunday evening August 24.
With the expectation that
many people will want to attend the AAAI and the LISP conference
(as well as some of the AIM people),
the housing office  will arrange rooms so that
people will not have to move around.  One need only advise the housing office
of the intention to stay when the earliest reservation is made.

There are three days between the end of
the AAAI conference and the beginning of ours. Perhaps we may  be able to 
entice more people to stay over if we offer some social or technical
events in the interim. We are considering a tour through the Santa Clara
area vineyards (Napa valley is a several hour bus trip, and that is not too
attractive in mid-August).
I am also planning to arrange some   tutorials for  August 22-23 for
people, wishing to learn more about LISP.

The final issue to be considered is the choice of participants
for the panel discussion. I  would like the committee to suggest participants;
from the
nominations, I  will select about
six individuals.
The tentative title for the discussion is "What is LISP?".
The idea came about from an informal discussion a few years ago at an 
ARPA workshop; the ARPA sponsor asked the audience basically "what is it 
about LISP that attracts people, and what could be done to make ADA attractive
to the LISP community". Ideas flew fast and furiously; I regreted
not having a tape recorder.  Recently, a similar
experience occurred at the January Principles of Programming Lanugages
conference, where Alan Perlis debatted Peter Wegner on the topic
"Will ADA make programming cheaper?". Perlis argued against the point, and
sighted  the LISP experience --its programming  style and environments-- as 
an example that people should consider when examining the problems of making
complex software. It does seem as if the
programming world is splitting  very sharply with ADA taking the  Algol/Pascal
school and LISP (at least so far) being the focal point for the applicative
school.It is important to make more widely
known the benefits of the class of languages and programming styles that LISP
represents. I would like the discussion to try to illuminate these ideas,
giving some attention to  what future courses for programming
languages might be. I would like the panel to reflect a broad spectrum
of background and opinion about applicative programming. 
\.


\←L\→S\←R\-L\/'2;\+L\→L

Yours sincerely,


John R. Allen
Stanford Artificial Intelligence Lab
Computer Science Department
Stanford University
Stanford, Cal 94305


18215 Bayview Dr.
Los Gatos Ca, 95030

\←S\→L