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Why do we know so little about programming languages, and what would have happened if we had known more?

Published:14 October 2014Publication History
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Abstract

Programming language research in the last decades was mainly driven by mathematical methods (such as formal semantics, correctness proofs, type soundness proofs, etc.) or run-time arguments based on benchmark tests. This happened despite the frequent discussion over programming language usability. We have now been through decade after decade of one language after another domainating the field, forcing companies to switch languages and migrate libraries. Now that Javascript seems to be the next language to dominate, people start to ask old questions anew. The first goal of this talk is to discuss why the application of empirical methods is (still) relatively rare in PL research, and to discuss what could be done in empirical methods to make them a substantial part of PL research. The second goal is to speculate about the possible effects that concrete empirical knowledge could have had on the programming language community. For example, what would have happened to programming languages if current knowledge would have been available 30 years ago? What if knowledge about programming languages from the year 2050 would be available today?

References

  1. Hanenberg, S. Faith, hope, and love: An essay on software science's neglect of human factors. In Proceedings of the ACM international conference on Object oriented programming systems languages and applications (Reno/Tahoe, Nevada, USA, October 2010), OOPSLA '10, pp. 933--946. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  2. Stefik, A., and Hanenberg, S. The programming language wars: Questions and responsibilities for the programming language community. In Proceedings of Onward 2014, Portland, US (New York, NY, USA, 2014), ACM. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  3. Wohlin, C., Runeson, P., Höst, M., Ohlsson, M. C., Regnell, B., and Wesslén, A. Experimentation in software engineering: an introduction. Kluwer Academic Publishers, Norwell, MA, USA, 2000. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library

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  1. Why do we know so little about programming languages, and what would have happened if we had known more?

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    • Published in

      cover image ACM SIGPLAN Notices
      ACM SIGPLAN Notices  Volume 50, Issue 2
      DLS '14
      February 2015
      146 pages
      ISSN:0362-1340
      EISSN:1558-1160
      DOI:10.1145/2775052
      • Editor:
      • Andy Gill
      Issue’s Table of Contents
      • cover image ACM Conferences
        DLS '14: Proceedings of the 10th ACM Symposium on Dynamic languages
        October 2014
        160 pages
        ISBN:9781450332118
        DOI:10.1145/2661088

      Copyright © 2014 Owner/Author

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      Association for Computing Machinery

      New York, NY, United States

      Publication History

      • Published: 14 October 2014

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