Because imperative programming is not very interesting from a programming language theory point of view. I don't know, I find GCL and predicate transformer sem

Because imperative programming is not very interesting from a programming language theory point of view. I don't know, I find GCL and predicate transformer semantics to be quite interesting. Esterel's approach to synchronous reactive systems, too. I don't see why the research potential in imperative languages couldn't be ripe. The semantic possibilities are large. A ton of PL and OS research from ETH Zurich, Xerox PARC and Bell Labs alike have been from imperative language designs.