Since the early 1990s, genetic programming (GP) a discipline whose goal is to enable the automatic generation of computer programs has emerged as one of the most promising paradigms for fast, productive software development. GP combines biological metaphors gleaned from Darwin's theory of evolution with computer-science approaches drawn from the field of machine learning to create programs that are capable of adapting or recreating themselves for open-ended tasks.
This unique introduction to GP provides a detailed overview of the subject and its antecedents, with extensive references to the published and online literature. In addition to explaining the fundamental theory and important algorithms, the text includes practical discussions covering a wealth of potential applications and real-world implementation techniques. Software professionals needing to understand and apply GP concepts will find this book an invaluable practical and theoretical guide."

This volume contains the proceedings of EuroGP 2000, the European Conf- ence on Genetic Programming, held in Edinburgh on the 15th and 16th April 2000. This event was the third in a series which started with the two European workshops: EuroGP'98, held in Paris in April 1998, and EuroGP'99, held in Gothenburg in May 1999. EuroGP 2000 was held in conjunction with EvoWo- shops 2000 (17th April) and ICES 2000 (17th-19th April). Genetic Programming (GP) is a growing branch of Evolutionary Compu- tion in which the structures in the population being evolved are computer p- grams. GP has been applied successfully to a large number of di?cult problems like automatic design, pattern recognition, robotic control, synthesis of neural networks, symbolic regression, music and picture generation, biomedical app- cations, etc. In recent years,even human-competitive results have been achieved by a number of groups. EuroGP 2000, the ?rst evolutionary computation conference of the new m- lennium, was the biggest event devoted to genetic programming to be held in Europe in 2000. It was a high quality conference where state-of-the-art work on the theory of GP and applications of GP to real world problems was presented.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Second European Workshop on Genetic Programming, EuroPG '99, held in Göteborg, Sweden in May 1999.The 12 revised full papers and 11 posters presented have been carefully reviewed and selected for inclusion in the book. All the relevant aspects of genetic programming are addressed ranging from traditional and foundational issues to applications in a variety of fields.