252 papers · page 3 of 13
During the 1990s and first decade of the 2000s, problem-solving environments (PSEs) were a topic of research among a community with the vision to create software systems “with all of the computational facilities necessary to solve a target class of problems.” Use of the term has …
The λ-calculus models the core of functional programming languages. This essay discusses a gap between the theory of the λ-calculus and functional languages, namely the fact that the former does not give a status to sharing, the essential ingredient for efficiency in the lattter.…
Programming languages are languages --- “unnatural” languages because they are constructed explicitly; “formal” languages because they rely on mathematical notations and are described mathematically; “machine” languages because they are used to communicate with machines. Above al…
Spreadsheets are a popular programming model among both novice and advanced users. It allows for quick development of computational tasks over the user's data set. It has also been suggested as a model for lightweight, low-code development of small-scale personal and collaborativ…
We present our vision for creating an industrial legacy software rejuvenation toolchain. The goal is to semi automatically remove code smells from stateful software used in Cyber Physical Systems (CPS). Compared to existing tools that remove code smells, our toolchain can remove …
Quantum computers are becoming a reality. The advantage of quantum computing is that it has the potential to solve computationally complex problems in a fixed amount time, independent of the size of the problem. However, the kinds of problems for which these computers are a good …
Interactive proof assistants are computer programs carefully constructed to check a human-designed proof of a mathematical claim with high confidence in the implementation. However, this only validates truth of a formal claim, which may have been mistranslated from a claim made i…
Conventionally, merging code files is performed using generic line-based merging algorithms (e.g., diff3) that are unaware of the syntax and semantics of the programming language, outputting conflicts that could be avoided. Structured and semistructured merging techniques are cap…
Exploration of state and behavior is essential for understanding and debugging object-oriented programs. Many time-related questions about object communication – an object’s history – only arise in the context of a specific error in the here and now. At such a specific point in t…
By 2030 for each filled position in Software Engineering, two positions would remain unfilled. This already apparent loss of productivity has the software industry scrambling to fill the missing positions with citizen developers---technical people with little or no programming sk…
Developers have long recognized the importance of the concepts underlying the systems they build, and the primary role that concepts play in shaping user experience. To date, however, concepts have tended to be only implicit in software design with development being organized ins…
Integration, composition, mechanization, and AI assisted development are the driving themes in the future of software development. At their core these concepts are rooted in the increasingly important role of computing in our world, the desire to deliver functionality faster, wit…
Learning the syntax and semantics of a new programming language is a challenge. It is common for learners to refer to language documentation many times and in many contexts as they build comfort and understanding. We review existing functional language documentation, finding that…
Adaptive computing systems automatically monitor their behavior and dynamically adjust their own configuration parameters—or knobs—to ensure that user goals are met despite unpredictable external disturbances to the system. A major limitation of prior adaptation frameworks is tha…
Practice adaptation in the domain of software engineering (SE) is ubiquitous and well-studied. The main rationale for tailoring lies in the complexity of the environments within which SE projects are implemented. This complexity means that the practices that make up software meth…
Crochet is still purely manual. While other crafts such as knitting or weaving have received technical support, the process of creating instructions for new crochet patterns is barely supported by domain-specific, digital tools. Those tools are constrained by their underlying cro…
Program synthesis has the potential to democratize programming by enabling non-programmers to write software. But conventional approaches to synthesis may fail if given insufficient information - a common occurrence when asking non-experts to describe the application they want to…
We present a language with all the power of abstraction and the simplicity of two fundamental relations: substitution and categorization. With a graphic symbol representing each one of them, we created a playful visual programming environment aimed at teaching with high expressiv…
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 Flix over the last several ye…
A test oracle determines whether a system behaves correctly for a given input. Automatic testing techniques rely on an automated test oracle to test the system without user interaction. Important families of automated test oracles include Differential Testing and Metamorphic Test…