Most influential Papers in Programming Languages
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Inspired by Ryan Marcus’s blog post that explores what are the most influential papers in the field of databases, I wanted to explore the most influential papers in PL. Following Ryan’s approach, this post analyzes the PageRank score of a PL paper in the citation graph. The citation graph is a directed graph where every edge represents a citation from one paper to another. Intuitively, a paper has a higher PageRank score if it is frequently cited (i.e., is impactful) and the citations come from highly cited papers (i.e., inspires impactful work).
The data is collected from DBLP’s awesome knowledge graph, which has integrated citation graphs from OpenCitations, and only includes papers at POPL, PLDI, ICFP, and OOPSLA and citations among these papers. I then use the NetworkX package for calculating the PageRank. For someone, like me, who seldom does data processing or program in Python, the work is fairly lightweight thanks to the help from Copilot.
Some disclaimers: All rankings are necessarily subjective, and this ranking is no exception. The inclusion of only papers from POPL/PLDI/ICFP/OOPSLA means some of the greatest PL papers are missed. I also don’t know if I’m doing the calculation right.
Other lists
For the purpose of this blog post, I also ask Claude, the AI chat bot, for a comment on what this implies about the culture of the PL community.
Most influential papers of all time
| rank | paper | year | score |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Abstract Interpretation: A Unified Lattice Model for Static Analysis of Programs by Construction or Approximation of Fixpoints. Radhia Cousot, Patrick Cousot. | 1977 | 0.00342997 |
| 2 | Efficient Implementation of the Smalltalk-80 System. Allan M. Schiffman, L. Peter Deutsch. | 1984 | 0.0017812 |
| 3 | Principal Type-Schemes for Functional Programs. Luís Damas, Robin Milner. | 1982 | 0.00161426 |
| 4 | Proof-Carrying Code. George C. Necula. | 1997 | 0.00156085 |
| 5 | The DaCapo benchmarks: java benchmarking development and analysis. Antony L. Hosking, Asjad M. Khan, Maria Jump, Rotem Bentzur, et al. | 2006 | 0.00140245 |
| 6 | Automatic Predicate Abstraction of C Programs. Thomas Ball, Rupak Majumdar, Sriram K. Rajamani, Todd D. Millstein. | 2001 | 0.0013983 |
| 7 | QuickCheck: a lightweight tool for random testing of Haskell programs. Koen Claessen, John Hughes. | 2000 | 0.00136171 |
| 8 | Automatic Discovery of Linear Restraints Among Variables of a Program. Nicolas Halbwachs, Patrick Cousot. | 1978 | 0.00135758 |
| 9 | The Java memory model. Jeremy Manson, Sarita V. Adve, William W. Pugh. | 2005 | 0.00133448 |
| 10 | Precise Interprocedural Dataflow Analysis via Graph Reachability. Thomas W. Reps, Shmuel Sagiv, Susan Horwitz. | 1995 | 0.00131033 |
| 11 | The Essence of Compiling with Continuations. Cormac Flanagan, Amr Sabry, Bruce F. Duba, Matthias Felleisen. | 1993 | 0.00128836 |
| 12 | Lava: Hardware Design in Haskell. Per Bjesse, Satnam Singh, Mary Sheeran, Koen Claessen. | 1998 | 0.00125842 |
| 13 | How to Make ad-hoc Polymorphism Less ad-hoc. Philip Wadler, Stephen Blott. | 1989 | 0.00124247 |
| 14 | DART: directed automated random testing. Nils Klarlund, Patrice Godefroid, Koushik Sen. | 2005 | 0.00123709 |
| 15 | Extended Static Checking for Java. Mark Lillibridge, Cormac Flanagan, K. Rustan M. Leino, James B. Saxe, et al. | 2002 | 0.00123161 |
| 16 | Functional Reactive Animation. Conal Elliott, Paul Hudak. | 1997 | 0.00115399 |
| 17 | Self: The Power of Simplicity. David M. Ungar, Randall B. Smith. | 1987 | 0.00114871 |
| 18 | Using Prototypical Objects to Implement Shared Behavior in Object Oriented Systems. Henry Lieberman. | 1986 | 0.00107024 |
| 19 | Dependent Types in Practical Programming. Hongwei Xi, Frank Pfenning. | 1999 | 0.00106245 |
| 20 | Enforcing High-Level Protocols in Low-Level Software. Robert DeLine, Manuel Fähndrich. | 2001 | 0.00105685 |
| 21 | Language support for lightweight transactions. Tim Harris, Keir Fraser. | 2003 | 0.00105447 |
| 22 | Automating string processing in spreadsheets using input-output examples. Sumit Gulwani. | 2011 | 0.00105322 |
| 23 | CommonLoops: Merging Lisp and Object-Oriented Programming. Mark Stefik, Kenneth M. Kahn, Larry Masinter, Gregor Kiczales, et al. | 1986 | 0.0010497 |
| 24 | The Implementation of the Cilk-5 Multithreaded Language. Keith H. Randall, Charles E. Leiserson, Matteo Frigo. | 1998 | 0.00104562 |
| 25 | Points-to Analysis in Almost Linear Time. Bjarne Steensgaard. | 1996 | 0.00103218 |
| 26 | Model Checking for Programming Languages using Verisoft. Patrice Godefroid. | 1997 | 0.00102663 |
| 27 | Systematic Design of Program Analysis Frameworks. Radhia Cousot, Patrick Cousot. | 1979 | 0.00102626 |
| 28 | Realistic Compilation by Program Transformation. Paul Hudak, Richard Kelsey. | 1989 | 0.00101166 |
| 29 | Lazy abstraction. Ranjit Jhala, Thomas A. Henzinger, Rupak Majumdar, Grégoire Sutre. | 2002 | 0.00100401 |
| 30 | A Data Locality Optimizing Algorithm. Michael E. Wolf, Monica S. Lam. | 1991 | 0.000994261 |
Claude’s comment: This table reveals the PL community’s strong foundation in formal methods and mathematical reasoning. Abstract interpretation (Cousot & Cousot) topping the list demonstrates how theoretical frameworks form the backbone of the field. The prominence of type systems papers (Damas & Milner, Wadler & Blott) and verification approaches (Proof-Carrying Code, Extended Static Checking) shows the community’s enduring commitment to program correctness. The diversity across implementation techniques (Smalltalk, Self), paradigms (functional, object-oriented), and analysis methods reflects a field that values both theoretical rigor and practical implementation. The temporal span (1977-2011) indicates that foundational ideas continue to exert influence decades later, suggesting a community that builds upon and refines core concepts rather than chasing novelty.
Most influential papers of the last decade (2010-2019)
| rank | paper | year | score |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Automating string processing in spreadsheets using input-output examples. Sumit Gulwani. | 2011 | 0.00105322 |
| 2 | Finding and understanding bugs in C compilers. Xuejun Yang, Yang Chen, Eric Eide, John Regehr. | 2011 | 0.000971975 |
| 3 | Mathematizing C++ concurrency. Mark Batty, Susmit Sarkar, Tjark Weber, Scott Owens, et al. | 2011 | 0.000837997 |
| 4 | From program verification to program synthesis. Jeffrey S. Foster, Sumit Gulwani, Saurabh Srivastava. | 2010 | 0.000730589 |
| 5 | Synthesizing data structure transformations from input-output examples. John K. Feser, Swarat Chaudhuri, Isil Dillig. | 2015 | 0.000600567 |
| 6 | Iris: Monoids and Invariants as an Orthogonal Basis for Concurrent Reasoning. Filip Sieczkowski, Derek Dreyer, David Swasey, Ralf Jung, et al. | 2015 | 0.00058064 |
| 7 | Replicated data types: specification, verification, optimality. Alexey Gotsman, Hongseok Yang, Marek Zawirski, Sebastian Burckhardt. | 2014 | 0.000577928 |
| 8 | Verdi: a framework for implementing and formally verifying distributed systems. James R. Wilcox, Doug Woos, Thomas E. Anderson, Xi Wang, et al. | 2015 | 0.000571382 |
| 9 | Halide: a language and compiler for optimizing parallelism, locality, and recomputation in image processing pipelines. Jonathan Ragan-Kelley, Sylvain Paris, Frédo Durand, Saman P. Amarasinghe, et al. | 2013 | 0.000564648 |
| 10 | Understanding POWER multiprocessors. Susmit Sarkar, Luc Maranget, Jade Alglave, Derek Williams, et al. | 2011 | 0.000533082 |
| 11 | Synthesis of loop-free programs. Susmit Jha, Ashish Tiwari, Sumit Gulwani, Ramarathnam Venkatesan. | 2011 | 0.00051459 |
| 12 | Code completion with statistical language models. Martin T. Vechev, Eran Yahav, Veselin Raychev. | 2014 | 0.000498111 |
| 13 | Quipper: a scalable quantum programming language. Peter Selinger, Benoît Valiron, Alexander S. Green, Neil J. Ross, et al. | 2013 | 0.000493401 |
| 14 | Continuity analysis of programs. Sumit Gulwani, Swarat Chaudhuri, Roberto Lublinerman. | 2010 | 0.000492084 |
| 15 | FlashExtract: a framework for data extraction by examples. Sumit Gulwani, Vu Le. | 2014 | 0.000490351 |
| 16 | A lightweight symbolic virtual machine for solver-aided host languages. Emina Torlak, Rastislav Bodík. | 2014 | 0.000470568 |
| 17 | Distance makes the types grow stronger: a calculus for differential privacy. Benjamin C. Pierce, Jason Reed. | 2010 | 0.000452448 |
| 18 | NetkAT: semantic foundations for networks. Jean-Baptiste Jeannin, Dexter Kozen, David Walker, Cole Schlesinger, et al. | 2014 | 0.000441762 |
| 19 | Refinement types for Haskell. Niki Vazou, Eric L. Seidel, Dimitrios Vytiniotis, Simon L. Peyton Jones, et al. | 2014 | 0.000440562 |
| 20 | Mostly-automated verification of low-level programs in computational separation logic. Adam Chlipala. | 2011 | 0.000438855 |
| 21 | FlashMeta: a framework for inductive program synthesis. Sumit Gulwani, Oleksandr Polozov. | 2015 | 0.000435989 |
| 22 | Type-and-example-directed program synthesis. Steve Zdancewic, Peter-Michael Osera. | 2015 | 0.000431928 |
| 23 | An executable formal semantics of C with applications. Grigore Rosu, Chucky Ellison. | 2012 | 0.000424127 |
| 24 | An abstract domain for certifying neural networks. Martin T. Vechev, Markus Püschel, Gagandeep Singh, Timon Gehr. | 2019 | 0.000424124 |
| 25 | Test-case reduction for C compiler bugs. Eric Eide, John Regehr, Yang Chen, Chucky Ellison, et al. | 2012 | 0.000423168 |
| 26 | RustBelt: securing the foundations of the rust programming language. Robbert Krebbers, Ralf Jung, Derek Dreyer, Jacques-Henri Jourdan. | 2018 | 0.000418011 |
| 27 | Secure distributed programming with value-dependent types. Juan Chen, Pierre-Yves Strub, Cédric Fournet, Jean Yang, et al. | 2011 | 0.000409424 |
| 28 | Program synthesis from polymorphic refinement types. Armando Solar-Lezama, Ivan Kuraj, Nadia Polikarpova. | 2016 | 0.000408485 |
| 29 | Compiler validation via equivalence modulo inputs. Vu Le, Zhendong Su, Mehrdad Afshari. | 2014 | 0.000406365 |
| 30 | Frenetic: a network programming language. Michael J. Freedman, David Walker, Alec Story, Rob Harrison, et al. | 2011 | 0.000406272 |
Claude’s comment: The recent influential papers reveal a shift toward program synthesis and verification of real-world systems. Gulwani’s work on programming-by-example tops the list, showing increasing interest in making formal methods accessible to non-experts. The prevalence of papers on verifying complex artifacts (compilers, distributed systems, concurrent programs) demonstrates the community’s ambition to apply theory to challenging real-world problems. The emergence of papers on specialized domains (quantum computing, network programming, differential privacy) indicates the field’s adaptability to new computing paradigms. The integration of machine learning techniques (statistical language models for code completion) suggests openness to cross-pollination with other disciplines. Overall, modern PL research appears focused on bridging the gap between theoretical foundations and practical applications.
Most influential authors
| rank | name | score |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Philip Wadler | 0.00512011 |
| 2 | Sumit Gulwani | 0.00462223 |
| 3 | Simon L. Peyton Jones | 0.0045637 |
| 4 | Matthias Felleisen | 0.00441081 |
| 5 | Alex Aiken | 0.00412043 |
| 6 | Cormac Flanagan | 0.00407936 |
| 7 | Patrick Cousot | 0.00390093 |
| 8 | Xavier Leroy | 0.00386847 |
| 9 | Martin C. Rinard | 0.00382284 |
| 10 | George C. Necula | 0.00356125 |
| 11 | Adam Chlipala | 0.00335555 |
| 12 | Benjamin C. Pierce | 0.00326097 |
| 13 | Robert Harper | 0.00317152 |
| 14 | Rastislav Bodík | 0.00300441 |
| 15 | Thomas W. Reps | 0.00293058 |
| 16 | Derek Dreyer | 0.00291501 |
| 17 | Hans-Juergen Boehm | 0.0028994 |
| 18 | Radhia Cousot | 0.00286249 |
| 19 | Monica S. Lam | 0.00280135 |
| 20 | David M. Ungar | 0.0025668 |
| 21 | Zhong Shao | 0.00256337 |
| 22 | Martin Odersky | 0.0025215 |
| 23 | Patrice Godefroid | 0.00251659 |
| 24 | Martin T. Vechev | 0.00249168 |
| 25 | Frank Pfenning | 0.00246236 |
| 26 | Stephanie Weirich | 0.00243712 |
| 27 | Matthew Flatt | 0.00239113 |
| 28 | Craig Chambers | 0.00237796 |
| 29 | Kathryn S. McKinley | 0.00235087 |
| 30 | J. Gregory Morrisett | 0.00233302 |
Claude’s comment: The author rankings reflect a community that values both theory and practice. Top-ranked researchers like Wadler, Peyton Jones, and Felleisen have contributed foundational theory while also developing practical languages and tools. The strong representation of functional programming experts indicates its outsized influence in PL research despite lower industry adoption. The prominence of verification and formal methods specialists (Cousot, Necula, Chlipala) reinforces the community’s emphasis on correctness and rigor. The diversity among top researchers – spanning type theory, compiler design, language implementation, and program analysis – suggests a field that respects multiple approaches to advancing programming languages. Many influential researchers have successfully straddled academic theory and practical language design, indicating that the community rewards those who bridge these worlds.