Advanced Programming Group

The Advanced Programming Specialist Group (APSG) is a Specialist Group (SG) of the British Computer Society (BCS). It held its first meeting, when it was referred to as "BCS Study Group No. 5", at Bishop's House, High Holborn, London WC1, England on 17 December 1959. It has met continuously in London since then, generally on the second Thursday of the months from October to May each year.

APSG seeks to explore new developments in programming languages, runtime environments, programming tools, multicore processors, mobile platforms and end user interfaces which are important to today's real world applications. Rather than relying on publication, the main format for communication at each meeting is a talk from an invited expert speaker. To enable participation by those who are unable to travel to London, many meetings are broadcast live via YouTube, with recordings of these events retained there. We also encourage discussion of themes related to these talks via our discussion group on LinkedIn. For more information on the current programme of events, and access to recordings and the slides used in past events, please refer to the Group's website.

Past chairmen of the Group were Ewart Willey (first chairman 1959–1974), Prof. Peter King (1974–1980), Peter Prowse (1980–1982), Prof. John Florentin (1982–2010), Prof. Geoff Sharman (2010-2014), and Rob Packwood (2014-2016). The current chairman is Prof Algirdas Pakštas.

From time to time, the Group holds joint meetings with other BCS SGs and Branches, for example:

and has been among those BCS groups which have pioneered wider access to meetings via the use of consumer recording and broadcasting technology, and social media.

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