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Foundations for a New Perspective of Understanding Programming (Dagstuhl Seminar 22402)

Authors: Madeline Endres, André Brechmann, Bonita Sharif, Westley Weimer, and Janet Siegmund

Published in: Dagstuhl Reports, Volume 12, Issue 10 (2023)

Abstract

Software is created by people who think, feel, and express themselves to one another and their computers. For a long time, researchers have investigated how people read and write code on their computers and talk about code with one another. This way, researchers identified skills, education, and practices necessary to acquire expertise and perform software development duties. While these investigations are valuable, we have yet to devise and validate a scientific theory of program comprehension, which would be an important step in designing support for developers that is tailored to their cognitive needs. To succeed, we need techniques to shed more light on how programmers think. To this end, we need to look beyond computer science research. Specifically, in the field of psychology and cognitive neuroscience, considerable progress has been made in building theories of cognitive processes. Important enabling technologies include eye tracking, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), electroencephalography (EEG), and functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS). These methods have revolutionized the understanding of cognitive processes and are routinely used in non-computing disciplines. Such techniques have the potential to also modernize classic approaches to program comprehension research by informing new experimental designs. However, the use of such technologies to study program comprehension is recent, and many of the challenges of this interdisciplinary field remain unexplored. This report documents the program and the outcomes of Dagstuhl Seminar 22402, "Foundations for a New Perspective of Understanding Programming", which explores these challenges. In total, 23 on-site participants attended the seminar along with two virtual keynote speakers. Participants engaged in intensive collaboration, including discussing past and current research, identifying gaps in the literature, and proposing future directions for improving the state of the art in program comprehension research.

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Madeline Endres, André Brechmann, Bonita Sharif, Westley Weimer, and Janet Siegmund. Foundations for a New Perspective of Understanding Programming (Dagstuhl Seminar 22402). In Dagstuhl Reports, Volume 12, Issue 10, pp. 61-83, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2023)

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@Article{endres_et_al:DagRep.12.10.61,
  author =	{Endres, Madeline and Brechmann, Andr\'{e} and Sharif, Bonita and Weimer, Westley and Siegmund, Janet},
  title =	{{Foundations for a New Perspective of Understanding Programming (Dagstuhl Seminar 22402)}},
  pages =	{61--83},
  journal =	{Dagstuhl Reports},
  ISSN =	{2192-5283},
  year =	{2023},
  volume =	{12},
  number =	{10},
  editor =	{Endres, Madeline and Brechmann, Andr\'{e} and Sharif, Bonita and Weimer, Westley and Siegmund, Janet},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/DagRep.12.10.61},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-178209},
  doi =		{10.4230/DagRep.12.10.61},
  annote =	{Keywords: Programming Methodology, Programming Education, Program Comprehension, Neuro-imaging, Eye Tracking, Human Cognition, Human Computer Interaction, Software Engineering, Human Factors}
}

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DOI: 10.4230/DagRep.8.2.1

Evidence About Programmers for Programming Language Design (Dagstuhl Seminar 18061)

Authors: Andreas Stefik, Bonita Sharif, Brad. A. Myers, and Stefan Hanenberg

Published in: Dagstuhl Reports, Volume 8, Issue 2 (2018)

Abstract

The report documents the program and outcomes of Dagstuhl Seminar 18061 "Evidence About Programmers for Programming Language Design". The seminar brought together a diverse group of researchers from the fields of computer science education, programming languages, software engineering, human-computer interaction, and data science. At the seminar, participants discussed methods for designing and evaluating programming languages that take the needs of programmers directly into account. The seminar included foundational talks to introduce the breadth of perspectives that were represented among the participants; then, groups formed to develop research agendas for several subtopics, including novice programmers, cognitive load, language features, and love of programming languages. The seminar concluded with a discussion of the current SIGPLAN artifact evaluation mechanism and the need for evidence standards in empirical studies of programming languages.

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Andreas Stefik, Bonita Sharif, Brad. A. Myers, and Stefan Hanenberg. Evidence About Programmers for Programming Language Design (Dagstuhl Seminar 18061). In Dagstuhl Reports, Volume 8, Issue 2, pp. 1-25, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2018)

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@Article{stefik_et_al:DagRep.8.2.1,
  author =	{Stefik, Andreas and Sharif, Bonita and Myers, Brad. A. and Hanenberg, Stefan},
  title =	{{Evidence About Programmers for Programming Language Design (Dagstuhl Seminar 18061)}},
  pages =	{1--25},
  journal =	{Dagstuhl Reports},
  ISSN =	{2192-5283},
  year =	{2018},
  volume =	{8},
  number =	{2},
  editor =	{Stefik, Andreas and Sharif, Bonita and Myers, Brad. A. and Hanenberg, Stefan},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/DagRep.8.2.1},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-92887},
  doi =		{10.4230/DagRep.8.2.1},
  annote =	{Keywords: programming language design, computer science education, empirical software engineering, eye tracking, evidence standards}
}

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Documents authored by Sharif, Bonita

Foundations for a New Perspective of Understanding Programming (Dagstuhl Seminar 22402)

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Evidence About Programmers for Programming Language Design (Dagstuhl Seminar 18061)

Abstract

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