Discount method for programming language evaluation

Abstract

This paper presents work in progress on developing a Discount Method for Programming Language Evaluation inspired by the Discount Usability Evaluation method (Benyon 2010) and the Instant Data Analysis method (Kjeldskov et al. 2004). The method is intended to bridge the gap between small scale internal language design evaluation methods and large scale surveys and quantitative evaluation methods. The method is designed to be applicable even before a compiler or IDE is developed for a new language. To test the method, a usability evaluation experiment was carried out on the Quorum programming language (Stefik et al. 2016) using programmers with experience in C and C#. When comparing our results with previous studies of Quorum, most of the data was comparable though not strictly in agreement. However, the discrepancies were mainly related to the programmers pre-existing expectations of a language. The results show that our evaluation method could serve language designers as a low-cost way for evaluating programming languages, especially in the early stages of the language design process. Future work includes adjusting and improving the method in such a way that it becomes usable to novice programming language designers.