Michael E. Hansen, A. Lumsdaine, Robert L. Goldstone
Programming language and library designers often debate the usability of particular design choices. These choices may impact many developers, yet scientific evidence for them is rarely provided. Cognitive models of program comprehension have existed for over thirty years, but the lack of quantitative (operational) validations for their internal components limits their utility for usability studies. To ease the burden of quantifying these existing models, we recommend using the ACT-R cognitive architecture - a simulation framework for psychological models. In this paper, we review the history of cognitive modeling in the psychology of programming. We provide an overview of the ACT-R cognitive architecture, and show how it could be used to fill in the gaps of an existing, yet incomplete, quantitative model (the Cognitive Complexity Metric). Lastly, we discuss the potential benefits and challenges associated with building a comprehensive cognitive model on top of a cognitive architecture.
{"title":"Cognitive architectures: a way forward for the psychology of programming","authors":"Michael E. Hansen, A. Lumsdaine, Robert L. Goldstone","doi":"10.1145/2384592.2384596","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1145/2384592.2384596","url":null,"abstract":"Programming language and library designers often debate the usability of particular design choices. These choices may impact many developers, yet scientific evidence for them is rarely provided. Cognitive models of program comprehension have existed for over thirty years, but the lack of quantitative (operational) validations for their internal components limits their utility for usability studies. To ease the burden of quantifying these existing models, we recommend using the ACT-R cognitive architecture - a simulation framework for psychological models. In this paper, we review the history of cognitive modeling in the psychology of programming. We provide an overview of the ACT-R cognitive architecture, and show how it could be used to fill in the gaps of an existing, yet incomplete, quantitative model (the Cognitive Complexity Metric). Lastly, we discuss the potential benefits and challenges associated with building a comprehensive cognitive model on top of a cognitive architecture.","PeriodicalId":168332,"journal":{"name":"SIGPLAN symposium on New ideas, new paradigms, and reflections on programming and software","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2012-10-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128811617","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Even though extensible programming languages have been around for decades, they have not received much attention so far. To obtain a more attractive solution, where extending the language is almost as easy as writing normal programs, extensibility should not be provided as a separate add-on, but rather as the very heart of the language. Furthermore, syntactic flexibility should not only allow to extend, but also to completely change the syntax when desired. MOSTflexiPL follows this approach by allowing users to define new operators, control structures, type constructors, and even declaration forms almost as easily as functions without sacrificing static type safety. This is achieved by encoding all constructs as generalized operators possessing any number of names and operands in an arbitrary order, where users have full control over associativity, precedence, and even scoping rules. Even though the language is still under development, there is a working compiler that translates MOSTflexiPL programs to equivalent C++ code.
{"title":"MOST-flexiPL: modular, statically typed, flexibly extensible programming language","authors":"C. Heinlein","doi":"10.1145/2384592.2384608","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1145/2384592.2384608","url":null,"abstract":"Even though extensible programming languages have been around for decades, they have not received much attention so far. To obtain a more attractive solution, where extending the language is almost as easy as writing normal programs, extensibility should not be provided as a separate add-on, but rather as the very heart of the language. Furthermore, syntactic flexibility should not only allow to extend, but also to completely change the syntax when desired. MOSTflexiPL follows this approach by allowing users to define new operators, control structures, type constructors, and even declaration forms almost as easily as functions without sacrificing static type safety. This is achieved by encoding all constructs as generalized operators possessing any number of names and operands in an arbitrary order, where users have full control over associativity, precedence, and even scoping rules. Even though the language is still under development, there is a working compiler that translates MOSTflexiPL programs to equivalent C++ code.","PeriodicalId":168332,"journal":{"name":"SIGPLAN symposium on New ideas, new paradigms, and reflections on programming and software","volume":"157 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2012-10-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127367391","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This essay discusses software development from the perspective of Empirical Modelling (EM) [4], an approach to computing that draws on the construals of David Gooding [52], Bruno Latour's vexing notion of construction [70] and William James's radical empiricism [63]. It argues that effective software development must embrace semantic principles radically different from those endorsed by the traditional perspective on software that is based on computational thinking. Of paramount importance is the immediacy of the developer's experience of the relationship between software as an artefact on the computer and software as an agency in the world.
{"title":"Realising software development as a lived experience","authors":"M. Beynon","doi":"10.1145/2384592.2384613","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1145/2384592.2384613","url":null,"abstract":"This essay discusses software development from the perspective of Empirical Modelling (EM) [4], an approach to computing that draws on the construals of David Gooding [52], Bruno Latour's vexing notion of construction [70] and William James's radical empiricism [63]. It argues that effective software development must embrace semantic principles radically different from those endorsed by the traditional perspective on software that is based on computational thinking. Of paramount importance is the immediacy of the developer's experience of the relationship between software as an artefact on the computer and software as an agency in the world.","PeriodicalId":168332,"journal":{"name":"SIGPLAN symposium on New ideas, new paradigms, and reflections on programming and software","volume":"6 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2012-10-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125717250","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Managed Data is a two-level approach to data abstraction in which programmers first define data description and manipulation mechanisms, and then use these mechanisms to define specific kinds of data. Managed Data allows programmers to take control of many important aspects of data, including persistence, access/change control, reactivity, logging, bidirectional relationships, resource management, invariants and validation. These features are implemented once as reusable strategies that can apply to many different data types. Managed Data is a general concept that can be implemented in several ways, including reflection, metaclasses, and macros. In this paper we argue for the importance of Managed Data and present a novel implementation of Managed Data based on interpretation of data models. We show how to inherit and compose interpreters to implement the features described above. Our approach allows Managed Data to be used in object-oriented languages that support reflection over field access (overriding the "dot" operator) or dynamic method creation. We also show how self-describing data models are useful for bootstrapping, allowing Managed Data to be used definition of Data Managers themselves. As a case study, we used Managed Data in a web development framework from the Ensō project to reuse database management and access control mechanisms across different data definitions.
{"title":"Managed data: modular strategies for data abstraction","authors":"A. Loh, T. Storm, W. Cook","doi":"10.1145/2384592.2384609","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1145/2384592.2384609","url":null,"abstract":"Managed Data is a two-level approach to data abstraction in which programmers first define data description and manipulation mechanisms, and then use these mechanisms to define specific kinds of data. Managed Data allows programmers to take control of many important aspects of data, including persistence, access/change control, reactivity, logging, bidirectional relationships, resource management, invariants and validation. These features are implemented once as reusable strategies that can apply to many different data types. Managed Data is a general concept that can be implemented in several ways, including reflection, metaclasses, and macros. In this paper we argue for the importance of Managed Data and present a novel implementation of Managed Data based on interpretation of data models. We show how to inherit and compose interpreters to implement the features described above. Our approach allows Managed Data to be used in object-oriented languages that support reflection over field access (overriding the \"dot\" operator) or dynamic method creation. We also show how self-describing data models are useful for bootstrapping, allowing Managed Data to be used definition of Data Managers themselves. As a case study, we used Managed Data in a web development framework from the Ensō project to reuse database management and access control mechanisms across different data definitions.","PeriodicalId":168332,"journal":{"name":"SIGPLAN symposium on New ideas, new paradigms, and reflections on programming and software","volume":"117 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2012-10-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126694945","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Programming is the process of expressing and refining ideas in a programming language. Ideally, we want our programming language to flexibly fit our natural thought process. Language innovations, such as procedural abstraction, object and aspect orientation, have helped increase programming agility. However, they still lack important features that a programmer could exploit to quickly experiment with design and implementation choices. We propose prorogued programming, a new paradigm more closely aligned with a programmer's thought process. A prorogued programming language (PPL) supports three basic principles: 1) proroguing concerns: the ability to defer a concern, to focus on and finish the current concern; 2) hybrid computation: the ability to involve the programmer as an integral part of computation; and 3) executable refinement: the ability to execute any intermediate program refinements. Working in a PPL, the programmer can run and experiment with an incomplete program, and gradually and iteratively reify the missing parts while catching design and implementation mistakes early. We describe the prorogued programming paradigm, our design and realization of the paradigm using Prorogued C#, our extension to C#, and demonstrate its utility through a few use cases.
{"title":"Liberating the programmer with prorogued programming","authors":"M. Afshari, Earl T. Barr, Z. Su","doi":"10.1145/2384592.2384595","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1145/2384592.2384595","url":null,"abstract":"Programming is the process of expressing and refining ideas in a programming language. Ideally, we want our programming language to flexibly fit our natural thought process. Language innovations, such as procedural abstraction, object and aspect orientation, have helped increase programming agility. However, they still lack important features that a programmer could exploit to quickly experiment with design and implementation choices.\u0000 We propose prorogued programming, a new paradigm more closely aligned with a programmer's thought process. A prorogued programming language (PPL) supports three basic principles: 1) proroguing concerns: the ability to defer a concern, to focus on and finish the current concern; 2) hybrid computation: the ability to involve the programmer as an integral part of computation; and 3) executable refinement: the ability to execute any intermediate program refinements. Working in a PPL, the programmer can run and experiment with an incomplete program, and gradually and iteratively reify the missing parts while catching design and implementation mistakes early. We describe the prorogued programming paradigm, our design and realization of the paradigm using Prorogued C#, our extension to C#, and demonstrate its utility through a few use cases.","PeriodicalId":168332,"journal":{"name":"SIGPLAN symposium on New ideas, new paradigms, and reflections on programming and software","volume":"7 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2012-10-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130749560","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Programmers demand more extensive class libraries so they can reuse more code and write less of their own. However, these libraries are often so large that programmers get lost in deep hierarchies of classes and their members that are very broad in number. Yet language designers continue to focus on computation, leaving tools to solve library exploration problems without much help from the language. This paper applies language design to improve IDE code completion that enables in-situ library exploration. Inference tackles depth by listing completions as long as the program can be "fixed" to support their selection; e.g. "pressed" can be listed as a widget completion since a widget can be a button. Influence mitigates breadth by leveraging types as completion selection models; e.g. a pressed event is more likely to be used on a button than a mouse event. We apply this design to YinYang, a language for programming simulations on tablets using touch-based menus.
{"title":"Escaping the maze of twisty classes","authors":"Sean McDirmid","doi":"10.1145/2384592.2384605","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1145/2384592.2384605","url":null,"abstract":"Programmers demand more extensive class libraries so they can reuse more code and write less of their own. However, these libraries are often so large that programmers get lost in deep hierarchies of classes and their members that are very broad in number. Yet language designers continue to focus on computation, leaving tools to solve library exploration problems without much help from the language.\u0000 This paper applies language design to improve IDE code completion that enables in-situ library exploration. Inference tackles depth by listing completions as long as the program can be \"fixed\" to support their selection; e.g. \"pressed\" can be listed as a widget completion since a widget can be a button. Influence mitigates breadth by leveraging types as completion selection models; e.g. a pressed event is more likely to be used on a button than a mouse event. We apply this design to YinYang, a language for programming simulations on tablets using touch-based menus.","PeriodicalId":168332,"journal":{"name":"SIGPLAN symposium on New ideas, new paradigms, and reflections on programming and software","volume":"18 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2012-10-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125274538","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
We are engaged in the design of a small, simple programming language for teaching novices object-oriented programming. This turns out to be far from a small, simple task. We focus on three of the problems that we encountered, and how we believe we have solved them. The problems are (1) gracefully combining object initialization, inheritance, and immutable objects, (2) reconciling apparently irreconcilable views on type-checking, and (3) providing a family of languages, each suitable for students at different levels of mastery, while ensuring conceptual integrity of their designs. In each case our solutions are based on existing research; our contribution is, by design, consolidation rather than innovation.
{"title":"Grace: the absence of (inessential) difficulty","authors":"A. Black, Kim B. Bruce, Michael Homer, J. Noble","doi":"10.1145/2384592.2384601","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1145/2384592.2384601","url":null,"abstract":"We are engaged in the design of a small, simple programming language for teaching novices object-oriented programming. This turns out to be far from a small, simple task. We focus on three of the problems that we encountered, and how we believe we have solved them. The problems are (1) gracefully combining object initialization, inheritance, and immutable objects, (2) reconciling apparently irreconcilable views on type-checking, and (3) providing a family of languages, each suitable for students at different levels of mastery, while ensuring conceptual integrity of their designs. In each case our solutions are based on existing research; our contribution is, by design, consolidation rather than innovation.","PeriodicalId":168332,"journal":{"name":"SIGPLAN symposium on New ideas, new paradigms, and reflections on programming and software","volume":"34 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2012-10-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127673196","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Engineering often precedes science. Incommensurability is real.
工程往往先于科学。不可通约性是真实的。
{"title":"The structure of a programming language revolution","authors":"Richard P. Gabriel","doi":"10.1145/2384592.2384611","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1145/2384592.2384611","url":null,"abstract":"Engineering often precedes science. Incommensurability is real.","PeriodicalId":168332,"journal":{"name":"SIGPLAN symposium on New ideas, new paradigms, and reflections on programming and software","volume":"26 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2012-10-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132536513","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Why do some programming languages fail and others succeed? What does the answer tell us about programming language design, implementation, and principles? To help answer these and other questions, we argue for examining the sociological groundings of programming language theory: socio-PLT. Researchers in the social sciences have studied adoption in many contexts. We show how their findings are applicable to programming language design. For example, many programming language features provide benefits that programmers cannot directly or immediately observe and therefore may not find compelling. From clean water to safe sex, the health community has repeatedly identified and surmounted similar observability barriers. We use such results from outside of programming language theory to frame a research agenda that should help us understand the social foundations of languages. Finally, we examine implications of our approach, such as for the design space of language features and the assessment of scientific research into programming languages.
{"title":"Socio-PLT: principles for programming language adoption","authors":"Leo A. Meyerovich, A. Rabkin","doi":"10.1145/2384592.2384597","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1145/2384592.2384597","url":null,"abstract":"Why do some programming languages fail and others succeed? What does the answer tell us about programming language design, implementation, and principles? To help answer these and other questions, we argue for examining the sociological groundings of programming language theory: socio-PLT.\u0000 Researchers in the social sciences have studied adoption in many contexts. We show how their findings are applicable to programming language design. For example, many programming language features provide benefits that programmers cannot directly or immediately observe and therefore may not find compelling. From clean water to safe sex, the health community has repeatedly identified and surmounted similar observability barriers. We use such results from outside of programming language theory to frame a research agenda that should help us understand the social foundations of languages. Finally, we examine implications of our approach, such as for the design space of language features and the assessment of scientific research into programming languages.","PeriodicalId":168332,"journal":{"name":"SIGPLAN symposium on New ideas, new paradigms, and reflections on programming and software","volume":"76 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2012-10-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127770386","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
There are many more similarities than distinctions between natural languages and the languages used in computer science. The term "language" has been used liberally as a metaphor in the discipline in terms of language creation, evolution and concept of elegance. Examples are presented to show that the language metaphor serves the discipline well. Branching off, resulting in the development of new languages, is an inevitable progression in the evolution of natural languages. The implications of this aspect of the language metaphor are considered in the form of domain-specific fields which share a common base of computing.
{"title":"On the language metaphor","authors":"Paul Adamczyk","doi":"10.1145/2089131.2089133","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1145/2089131.2089133","url":null,"abstract":"There are many more similarities than distinctions between natural languages and the languages used in computer science. The term \"language\" has been used liberally as a metaphor in the discipline in terms of language creation, evolution and concept of elegance. Examples are presented to show that the language metaphor serves the discipline well.\u0000 Branching off, resulting in the development of new languages, is an inevitable progression in the evolution of natural languages. The implications of this aspect of the language metaphor are considered in the form of domain-specific fields which share a common base of computing.","PeriodicalId":168332,"journal":{"name":"SIGPLAN symposium on New ideas, new paradigms, and reflections on programming and software","volume":"283 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2011-10-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131920658","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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