‹Programming› 2022
Mon 11 - Thu 14 April 2022

Welcome to the 8th Edition of the Programming Experience Workshop

Abstract

Some programming feels fun, other programming feels annoying. Why?

For a while now the study of programming has forced improvements to be described through the Fordist lens of usability and productivity, where the thing that matters is how much software can get built, how quickly.

But along the way, something has gone missing. What makes programmers feel the way they do when they’re programming? It’s not usually fun to spend an age doing something that could have been done easily, so efficiency and usability still matter, but they’re not the end of the story.

Some environments, activities, contexts, languages, infrastructures make programming feel alive, others feel like working in a bureaucracy. This is not purely technologically determined, writing Lisp to do your taxes probably still isn’t fun, but it’s also not technologically neutral, writing XML to produce performance art is still likely to be <bureaucratic></bureaucratic>.

Whilst we can probably mostly agree about what isn’t fun, what is remains more personal and without a space within the academy to describe it.

In its past editions, PX set its focus on questions like: Do programmers create text that is transformed into running behavior (the old way), or do they operate on behavior directly (“liveness”); are they exploring the live domain to understand the true nature of the requirements; are they like authors creating new worlds; does visualization matter; is the experience immediate, immersive, vivid and continuous; do fluency, literacy, and learning matter; do they build tools, meta-tools; are they creating languages to express new concepts quickly and easily; and curiously, is joy relevant to the experience?

In this 8th edition of PX, we will expand its focus to also cover the experience that programmers have. What makes it and what breaks it? For whom? What can we build to share the joy of programming with others?

Here is a list of topic areas to get you thinking:

  • creating programs
  • experience of programming
  • exploratory programming
  • liveness
  • non-standard tools
  • visual, auditory, tactile, and other non-textual languages
  • text and more than text
  • program understanding
  • domain-specific languages
  • psychology of programming
  • error tolerance
  • user studies

Correctness, performance, standard tools, foundations, and text-as-program are important traditional research areas, but the experience of programming and how to improve and evolve it are the focus of this workshop. We also welcome a wide spectrum of contributions on programming experience.

Previous editions

PX/21 at <Programming> 2021, March 23, 2021, Cambridge, UK, online

PX/20 at <Programming> 2020, March 23, 2020, Porto, Portugal, online

PX/19 at <Programming> 2019, April 1, 2019, Genoa, Italy

PX/18 at <Programming> 2018, April 10, 2018, Nice, France

PX/17.2 at SPLASH 2017, October 22, 2017, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

PX/17 at <Programming> 2017, April 4, 2017, Brussels, Belgium

PX/16 at ECOOP 2016, July 18, 2016, Rome, Italy

Flyer

http://programming-experience.org/px22/media/PX22CfP.pdf

http://programming-experience.org/px22/

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05:00 - 08:00
PX/22PX/22 at PX Online
Chair(s): Luke Church University of Cambridge | Lund University | Lark Systems, Richard P. Gabriel Dream Songs, Inc. & HPI, Robert Hirschfeld HPI, University of Potsdam, Hidehiko Masuhara Tokyo Institute of Technology
05:00
15m
Talk
Programming in an fMRI Scanner: A Report from the Field
PX/22
Steven Tanimoto University of Washington, Seattle, Rob Thompson , Todd Richards , Cheri Yates , Virginia Berninger
05:15
15m
Talk
let chart = ⊥; let song = ♩; // Embedding Visual Languages in Code
PX/22
Elliot Evans Polytope
05:30
15m
Talk
An Experiment in Live Collaborative Programming on the Croquet Shared Experience Platform
PX/22
Yoshiki Ohshima Croquet Studios, Aran Lunzer Croquet Corporation, Jenn Evans , Vanessa Freudenberg Croquet Corp, Brian Upton , David Smith
05:45
15m
Talk
Calling Cards: Concrete Visual End-User Programming
PX/22
Michael Homer Victoria University of Wellington
06:00
15m
Talk
CodeMap: a Graphical Note-Taking Tool Cooperating with an Integrated Development Environment
PX/22
Rikito Taniguchi Tokyo Institute of Technology, Hidehiko Masuhara Tokyo Institute of Technology
06:15
15m
Talk
Toward Understanding Task Complexity in Maintenance-based Studies of Programming Tools
PX/22
Patrick Rein Hasso Plattner Institute, Tom Beckmann Hasso Plattner Institute, Toni Mattis Hasso Plattner Institute, University of Potsdam, Robert Hirschfeld HPI, University of Potsdam
06:30
15m
Talk
Example Mining - Assisting Example Creation to Enhance Code Comprehension
PX/22
Eva Krebs Hasso Plattner Institute (HPI), University of Potsdam, Germany, Patrick Rein Hasso Plattner Institute, Robert Hirschfeld HPI, University of Potsdam
06:45
15m
Talk
A Live Environment to Improve the Refactoring Experience
PX/22
Sara Fernandes FEUP, Universidade do Porto, Ademar Aguiar FEUP, Universidade do Porto, André Restivo LIACC, Universidade do Porto, Porto, Portugal
07:00
15m
Talk
Crosscut — Drawing Dynamic Representations
PX/22
Szymon Kaliski , Ivan Reese Ink&Switch, Marcel Goethals Ink&Switch
07:15
45m
Other
Open discussion
PX/22

Call for Papers

Welcome to the 8th Edition of the Programming Experience Workshop

Abstract

Some programming feels fun, other programming feels annoying. Why?

For a while now the study of programming has forced improvements to be described through the Fordist lens of usability and productivity, where the thing that matters is how much software can get built, how quickly.

But along the way, something has gone missing. What makes programmers feel the way they do when they’re programming? It’s not usually fun to spend an age doing something that could have been done easily, so efficiency and usability still matter, but they’re not the end of the story.

Some environments, activities, contexts, languages, infrastructures make programming feel alive, others feel like working in a bureaucracy. This is not purely technologically determined, writing Lisp to do your taxes probably still isn’t fun, but it’s also not technologically neutral, writing XML to produce performance art is still likely to be <bureaucratic></bureaucratic>.

Whilst we can probably mostly agree about what isn’t fun, what is remains more personal and without a space within the academy to describe it.

In its past editions, PX set its focus on questions like: Do programmers create text that is transformed into running behavior (the old way), or do they operate on behavior directly (“liveness”); are they exploring the live domain to understand the true nature of the requirements; are they like authors creating new worlds; does visualization matter; is the experience immediate, immersive, vivid and continuous; do fluency, literacy, and learning matter; do they build tools, meta-tools; are they creating languages to express new concepts quickly and easily; and curiously, is joy relevant to the experience?

In this 8th edition of PX, we will expand its focus to also cover the experience that programmers have. What makes it and what breaks it? For whom? What can we build to share the joy of programming with others?

Here is a list of topic areas to get you thinking:

  • creating programs
  • experience of programming
  • exploratory programming
  • liveness
  • non-standard tools
  • visual, auditory, tactile, and other non-textual languages
  • text and more than text
  • program understanding
  • domain-specific languages
  • psychology of programming
  • error tolerance
  • user studies

Correctness, performance, standard tools, foundations, and text-as-program are important traditional research areas, but the experience of programming and how to improve and evolve it are the focus of this workshop. We also welcome a wide spectrum of contributions on programming experience.

Submissions

Submissions are solicited for Programming Experience 2022 (PX/22). The thrust of the workshop is to explore the human experience of programming—what it feels like to program, or what it should feel like. The technical topics include exploratory programming, live programming, authoring, representation of active content, visualization, navigation, modularity mechanisms, immediacy, literacy, fluency, learning, tool building, and language engineering.

Submissions by academics, professional programmers, and non-professional programmer are welcome. Submissions can be in any form and format, including but not limited to papers, presentations, demos, videos, panels, debates, essays, writers’ workshops, and art. Presentation slots are expected to be between 20 minutes and one hour (if time allows), depending on quality, form, and relevance to the workshop.

Submissions of academic papers directed toward publication should be so marked, and the program committee will engage in peer review for all such papers.

All artifacts are to be submitted via EasyChair. Papers and essays must be written in English, provided as PDF documents, and strictly adhere to the ACM Format. If you are using LaTeX, please follow the ACM Conference ‘acmart’ Format (v1.77 or newer) with the ‘sigconf’ option and the BibTeX ACM Reference Format (‘\documentclass[sigconf,screen]{acmart}’). Please include page numbers in your submission for review using the LaTeX command ‘\settopmatter{printfolios=true}’ (see examples in the template). If you are formatting your paper using Word, please use the proper template from the ACM Format site and select the ‘sigconf’ style there. 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.

There is no page limit on submitted papers and essays. It is, however, the responsibility of the authors to keep the reviewers interested and motivated to read the paper. Reviewers are under no obligation to read all or even a substantial portion of a paper or essay if they do not find the initial part of it interesting.

Publication

Authors of accepted contributions will be invited to present their work at the workshop.

Papers accepted for publication will appear in the ACM Digital Library (ACM DL) as part of the ‹Programming› 2022 Conference Companion.

Previous editions

PX/21 at <Programming> 2021, March 23, 2021, Cambridge, UK, online

PX/20 at <Programming> 2020, March 23, 2020, Porto, Portugal, online

PX/19 at <Programming> 2019, April 1, 2019, Genoa, Italy

PX/18 at <Programming> 2018, April 10, 2018, Nice, France

PX/17.2 at SPLASH 2017, October 22, 2017, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

PX/17 at <Programming> 2017, April 4, 2017, Brussels, Belgium

PX/16 at ECOOP 2016, July 18, 2016, Rome, Italy

Flyer

http://programming-experience.org/px22/media/PX22CfP.pdf

http://programming-experience.org/px22/

Welcome to the 8th Edition of the Programming Experience Workshop

Paper presentations, presentations without papers, live demonstrations, performances, videos, panel discussions, debates, writers’ workshops, art galleries, dramatic readings.

We will be following a variant of the writers’ workshop format used in the software patterns community. This format works well when the goals include improving the form or presentation of the ideas as well as improving or understanding the ideas themselves.

In the writers’ workshop:

  • A moderator leads and directs the discussion.
  • We review the pieces and their ideas one at a time.
  • In general, the authors whose work is under review are silent.
  • When discussing form, the following kinds of questions will be asked:
    • What did you gather / understand from the piece?
    • What aspects of the piece worked well to present the ideas?
    • What aspects need improvement? (These comments must be in the form of suggestions, not criticisms.)
  • When discussing the ideas, the following kinds of questions will be asked:

    • What are the ideas?
    • Which ideas seem like good ones (and why)?
    • Which ideas need improvement or elimination? (Make positive suggestions when you can.)
  • At the end the authors ask questions of the group.

This is the basic format, but we adjust the flow according to the needs of the group and the way the discussion is going. It is formal to ensure all the important points are covered.

For more information about the workshop format, please have a look at Richard P. Gabriel’s book “Writers’ Workshops & the World of Making Things”.

Previous editions

PX/21 at <Programming> 2021, March 23, 2021, Cambridge, UK, online

PX/20 at <Programming> 2020, March 23, 2020, Porto, Portugal, online

PX/19 at <Programming> 2019, April 1, 2019, Genoa, Italy

PX/18 at <Programming> 2018, April 10, 2018, Nice, France

PX/17.2 at SPLASH 2017, October 22, 2017, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

PX/17 at <Programming> 2017, April 4, 2017, Brussels, Belgium

PX/16 at ECOOP 2016, July 18, 2016, Rome, Italy