research-article

Principles of usable programming language design

Author:

Michael CoblenzAuthors Info & Claims

ICSE-C '17: Proceedings of the 39th International Conference on Software Engineering Companion

Pages 469 - 470

https://doi.org/10.1109/ICSE-C.2017.24

Published: 20 May 2017 Publication History

Get Access

Abstract

Tools for software engineers, such as programming languages and IDEs, should reflect the needs of their users. Unfortunately, designers of programming languages lack strong guidance regarding how to make these tools most effective for users. Though there is a well-developed theory of programming languages, there is little evidence regarding how to use this theory to build languages in which software engineers are most productive. I propose to develop methods for programming language design that fuse results from programming language theory with methods from human-computer interaction so that designers can create effective tools for users.

References

[1]

B. A. Myers, A. J. Ko, T. D. LaToza, and Y. Yoon, "Programmers are users too: Human-centered methods for improving programming tools," Computer, vol. 49, no. 7, pp. 44--52, July 2016.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[2]

M. Coblenz, J. Sunshine, J. Aldrich, B. Myers, S. Weber, and F. Shull, "Exploring language support for immutability," in ICSE, 2016.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[3]

M. Coblenz, W. Nelson, J. Aldrich, B. Myers, and J. Sunshine, "Glacier: Transitive Class Immutability for Java," in ICSE, 2017.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[4]

E. Gün Sirer, "Thoughts on the DAO hack," 2016. {Online}. Available: http://hackingdistributed.com/2016/06/17/thoughts-on-the-dao-hack/

Google Scholar

[5]

D. Harel, "Statecharts: A visual formalism for complex systems," Science of computer programming, vol. 8, no. 3, pp. 231--274, 1987.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[6]

M. Barnett, B.-Y. E. Chang, R. DeLine, B. Jacobs, and K. R. M. Leino, "Boogie: A modular reusable verifier for object-oriented programs," in International Symposium on Formal Methods for Components and Objects. Springer, 2005, pp. 364--387.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

Recommendations

PLIERS: A Process that Integrates User-Centered Methods into Programming Language Design

Programming language design requires making many usability-related design decisions. However, existing HCI methods can be impractical to apply to programming languages: languages have high iteration costs, programmers require significant learning time, ...
The Principles of the Flix Programming Language
Onward! 2022: Proceedings of the 2022 ACM SIGPLAN International Symposium on New Ideas, New Paradigms, and Reflections on Programming and Software

We present the design values and design principles of the Flix programming language, a functional-first, imperative, and logic programming language. We explain how these values and principles came into being and how they have influenced the design of ...
Interdisciplinary programming language design
Onward! 2018: Proceedings of the 2018 ACM SIGPLAN International Symposium on New Ideas, New Paradigms, and Reflections on Programming and Software

Approaches for programming language design used commonly in the research community today center around theoretical and performance-oriented evaluation. Recently, researchers have been considering more approaches to language design, including the use of ...

Comments

Please enable JavaScript to view thecomments powered by Disqus.

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

ICSE-C '17: Proceedings of the 39th International Conference on Software Engineering Companion

May 2017

558 pages

ISBN:9781538615898

General Chair:
Sebastian Uchitel
University of Buenos Aires, Argentina and Imperial College London, UK
,
Program Chairs:
Alessandro Orso
Georgia Institute of Technology
,
Martin Robillard
McGill University, Canada

Publisher

IEEE Press

Publication History

Published: 20 May 2017

Check for updates

Author Tags

Qualifiers

Research-article

Conference

ICSE '17

Sponsor:

SIGSOFT
IEEE-CS
SADIO

ICSE '17: 39th International Conference on Software Engineering

May 20 - 28, 2017

Buenos Aires, Argentina

Acceptance Rates

Overall Acceptance Rate 276 of 1,856 submissions, 15%

Upcoming Conference

ICSE 2025

2025 IEEE/ACM 46th International Conference on Software Engineering

April 26 - May 3, 2025

Ottawa , ON , Canada

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

0
Total Citations
188
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)4
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)0

Reflects downloads up to 18 Jan 2025

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

View Options

Login options

Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

Recommendations

PLIERS: A Process that Integrates User-Centered Methods into Programming Language Design

The Principles of the Flix Programming Language

Interdisciplinary programming language design