“ ..... object oriented seems to be becoming in the 1980s what structured programming was in the 1970s. ” Brian Randell and Pete Lee This quotation is from the invitation to the annual Newcastle University Conference on Main Trends in Computing, September 1988. It seems to capture the situation quite well, only that the object orientation is being materialised in languages and language constructs, as well as in the style of programming and as a perspective upon the task considered. The second European Conference on Object Oriented Programming (ECOOP’88) was held in Oslo, Norway, August 15-17, 1988, in the city where object oriented programming was born more than 20 years ago, when the Simula language appeared. The objectives of ECOOP’88 were to present the best international work in the field of object oriented programming to interested participants from industry and academia, and to be a forum for the exchange of ideas and the growth of professional relationships.