The 6th Workshop on Evaluation and Usability of Programming Languages and Tools (PLATEAU) at SPLASH 2015. The workshop will be held on Monday, October 26th.

Theme

Programming languages exist to enable programmers to develop software effectively. But how efficiently programmers can write software depends on the usability of the languages and tools that they develop with. The aim of this workshop is to discuss methods, metrics and techniques for evaluating the usability of languages and language tools. The supposed benefits of such languages and tools cover a large space, including making programs easier to read, write, and maintain; allowing programmers to write more flexible and powerful programs; and restricting programs to make them more safe and secure.

PLATEAU gathers the intersection of researchers in the programming language, programming tool, and human-computer interaction communities to share their research and discuss the future of evaluation and usability of programming languages and tools.

Some particular areas of interest are:

  • empirical studies of programming languages
  • methodologies and philosophies behind language and tool evaluation
  • software design metrics and their relations to the underlying language
  • user studies of language features and software engineering tools
  • visual techniques for understanding programming languages
  • critical comparisons of programming paradigms
  • tools to support evaluating programming languages
  • psychology of programming
  • domain specific language (e.g. database languages, security/privacy languages, architecture description languages) usability and evaluation

Links

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Mon 26 Oct

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08:30 - 10:00
Welcome and KeynotePLATEAU at Grand Station 5
Chair(s): Craig Anslow Middlesex University, London
08:30
30m
Talk
Organizers' Welcome
PLATEAU

09:00
60m
Talk
PLATEAU Keynote: Computational Thinking for All: Expanding the Boundaries of Computing for Nonprogrammers
PLATEAU
Mary Beth Rosson Pennsylvania State University
File Attached
10:30 - 12:00
ToolsPLATEAU at Grand Station 5
Chair(s): Thomas LaToza George Mason University
10:30
20m
Talk
Frequency Distribution of Error Messages
PLATEAU
David Pritchard University of Waterloo, Canada
File Attached
10:50
20m
Talk
An Evaluation of the DiaSuite Toolset by Professional Developers
PLATEAU
Milan Kabáč University of Bordeaux / Inria Bordeaux / LaBRI, Nic Volanschi Inria Bordeaux, Charles Consel University of Bordeaux
File Attached
11:10
20m
Talk
Aiding Programmers using Lightweight Integrated Code Visualization
PLATEAU
Per Ola Kristensson University of Cambridge, Chung Leung Lam University of Cambridge
File Attached
11:30
10m
Talk
Towards moldable development tools
PLATEAU
Andrei Chiş University of Bern, Switzerland, Tudor Gîrba tudorgirba.com, Switzerland, Oscar Nierstrasz University of Bern, Switzerland
DOI Pre-print Media Attached File Attached
11:40
13m
Talk
Understanding the Effects of Code Presentation
PLATEAU
Jason Jacques University of Cambridge, Per Ola Kristensson University of Cambridge
File Attached
13:30 - 15:00
Programming Languages PapersPLATEAU at Grand Station 5
Chair(s): Joshua Sunshine Carnegie Mellon University
13:30
20m
Talk
A user study for comparing the programming efficiency of modifying executable multimodal interaction descriptions. A domain-specific language versus equivalent event-callback code
PLATEAU
Fredy Cuenca Hasselt University - tUL - iMinds, Jan Van den Bergh Hasselt University - tUL - iMinds, Kris Luyten Hasselt University - tUL - iMinds, Karin Coninx Hasselt University - tUL - iMinds
File Attached
13:50
20m
Talk
A Study on the Most Popular Questions About Concurrent Programming
PLATEAU
Gustavo Pinto UFPE, Weslley Torres Federal University of Pernambuco, Fernando Castor UFPE
File Attached
14:10
10m
Talk
Comparing Transitive to Intransitive Object Immutability
PLATEAU
Michael Coblenz Carnegie Mellon University, Joshua Sunshine Carnegie Mellon University, Brad A. Myers Carnegie Mellon University, Sam Weber Software Engineering Institute, Forrest Shull Software Engineering Institute
File Attached
14:20
13m
Talk
Is Functional Programming Better for Modularity?
PLATEAU
Ismael Figueroa Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso, Chile, Romain Robbes University of Chile
File Attached
14:33
13m
Talk
Operators and precedence in programming languages
PLATEAU
Najwani Razali Victoria University of Wellington, James Noble Victoria University of Wellington, Stuart Marshall Victoria University of Wellington
File Attached
14:46
13m
Talk
Some Usability Hypotheses for Verification
PLATEAU
David J. Pearce Victoria University of Wellington
File Attached
15:30 - 17:00
Group DiscussionPLATEAU at Grand Station 5
Chair(s): Craig Anslow Middlesex University, London, Thomas LaToza George Mason University, Joshua Sunshine Carnegie Mellon University
15:30
20m
Talk
On the Need to Define Community Agreements for Controlled Experiments with Human Subjects -- A Discussion Paper
PLATEAU
Stefan Hanenberg University of Duisburg-Essen, Andreas Stefik University of Nevada, Las Vegas
File Attached
15:50
70m
Talk
Group discussion
PLATEAU

Accepted Papers

Title
Aiding Programmers using Lightweight Integrated Code Visualization
PLATEAU
File Attached
An Evaluation of the DiaSuite Toolset by Professional Developers
PLATEAU
File Attached
A Study on the Most Popular Questions About Concurrent Programming
PLATEAU
File Attached
A user study for comparing the programming efficiency of modifying executable multimodal interaction descriptions. A domain-specific language versus equivalent event-callback code
PLATEAU
File Attached
Comparing Transitive to Intransitive Object Immutability
PLATEAU
File Attached
Frequency Distribution of Error Messages
PLATEAU
File Attached
Is Functional Programming Better for Modularity?
PLATEAU
File Attached
On the Need to Define Community Agreements for Controlled Experiments with Human Subjects -- A Discussion Paper
PLATEAU
File Attached
Operators and precedence in programming languages
PLATEAU
File Attached
PLATEAU Keynote: Computational Thinking for All: Expanding the Boundaries of Computing for Nonprogrammers
PLATEAU
File Attached
Some Usability Hypotheses for Verification
PLATEAU
File Attached
Towards moldable development tools
PLATEAU
DOI Pre-print Media Attached File Attached
Understanding the Effects of Code Presentation
PLATEAU
File Attached

Call for Papers

Submissions deadline extended to 16 August.

PLATEAU encourages submissions of three types of papers:

Research and position papers: We encourage papers that describe work-in-progress or recently completed work based on the themes and goals of the workshop or related topics, report on experiences gained, question accepted wisdom, raise challenging open problems, or propose speculative new approaches. We will accept two types of papers: research papers up to 8 pages in length; and position papers up to 2 pages in length.

Hypotheses papers: Hypotheses papers explicitly identify beliefs of the research community or software industry about how a programming language, programming language feature, or programming language tool affects programming practice. Hypotheses can be collected from mailing lists, blog posts, paper introductions, developer forums, or interviews. Papers should clearly document the source(s) of each hypothesis and discuss the importance, use, and relevance of the hypotheses on research or practice. In addition, we invite language designers to share some of the usability reasoning that influenced their work. These will serve as an important first step in advancing our understanding of how language design supports programmers.Papers may also, but are not required to, review evidence for or against the hypotheses identified. Hypotheses papers can be up to 4 pages in length.

Submission site: PLATEAU papers should be submitted via EasyChair.

Format: Submissions should use the SIGPLAN Proceedings Format, 10 point font. Note that by default the SIGPLAN Proceedings Format produces papers in 9 point font. If you are formatting your paper using LaTeX, you will need to set the 10pt option in the \documentclass command. If you are formatting your paper using Word, you may wish to use the provided Word template that supports this font size. Please include page numbers in your submission. Setting the preprint option in the LaTeX \documentclass command generates page numbers. Please also ensure that your submission is legible when printed on a black and white printer. In particular, please check that colors remain distinct and font sizes are legible.

All types of papers will be published in the ACM Digital Library at the authors’ discretion.