Introduction to the peer commentary special section on “Jaws 30” by W. B. Langdon

In 1992, John R. Koza published his first book on Genetic Programming (GP): “Genetic Programming: On the Programming of Computers by Means of Natural Selection” [1]. This ground-breaking book paved the way for the establishment of a new field of study. Building on the seminal work by John Holland and others in the nascent research community of evolutionary computation, Koza showed how evolution can be applied also to problems related to programming, learning and design. Koza influenced the work of thousands of researchers and practitioners worldwide, many of whom aimed to continue the exploration, formalization and improvement of the original formulation of GP. Another aspect of the research derived from Koza’s work has been the application of GP to challenging problems, producing a long list of human-competitive solutions. In this special issue, we celebrate the 30th anniversary of [1] with a position paper written by William B. Landgon, titled “Jaws 30”, that focuses on the multiple impacts of the book on the GP field. The authority and prospective of W. B. Langdon is unique and unquestioned in this research field, with his work over the years covering a large subset of the core principles and components of GP. The paper has received the peer commentaries of Giovanni Squillero and Alberto Tonda, Mauro Castelli, Malcolm Heywood, Alberto Bartoli, Luca Manzoni and Eric Medvet, Jason Moore and Colin Johnson, all of them core contributors to the state-of-the-art in GP. W. B. Langdon responded to the commentary, giving rise to a very interesting and insightful discussion about the past, the present and the future of GP.