7th Workshop on the Evaluation and Usability of Programming Languages and Tools (PLATEAU)

Co-located with SPLASH 2016

Amsterdam, Netherlands

PLATEAU 2016

http://2016.splashcon.org/track/plateau2016

CALL FOR PAPERS

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.

TOPICS

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

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 HotCRP.

https://plateau2016.hotcrp.com/

Format: Submissions should use the SIGPLAN Proceedings Format (http://www.sigplan.org/Resources/Author/), 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.

KEYNOTE

Alan Blackwell

Professor

Computer Laboratory

University of Cambridge

Cambridge, United Kingdom

http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~afb21/

DATES

Submission deadline: August 1, 2016

PROGRAM COMMITTEE

Kelly Blincoe, Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand

Jeff Carver, University of Alabama, USA

Kathi Fisler, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, USA

Tudor Gîrba, Independent, Switzerland

Stefan Hanenberg, University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany

Andrew Ko, University of Washington, USA

Brad Myers, Carnegie Mellon University, USA

Peter-Michael Osera, Grinnell College, USA

Janet Siegmund, University of Passau, Germany

Jeremy Singer, University of Glasgow, United Kingdom

Emma Söderberg, Google, USA

Andreas Stefik, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, USA

Ian Utting, University of Kent, United Kingdom

Philip Wadler, University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom

ORGANIZERS

Craig Anslow, Middlesex University, UK

Thomas LaToza, George Mason University, USA

Joshua Sunshine, Carnegie Mellon University, USA

Mario Wolczko writes:

In early 2015 I was honored to be invited to develop and present a graduate course on Virtual Machines at UC Berkeley. The result is CS294-113: Virtual Machines and Managed Runtimes, which was presented in the Fall of 2015.

This page contains the materials from that course. All materials are Copyright © Oracle and Mario Wolczko, 2015-6, except as noted. The materials can be used non-commercially under the following Creative Commons license:

Virtual Machines and Managed Runtimes

Acknowledgements

I’d like to express my thanks to the following:

• Patrick Li, my T.A. for the course. Patrick devised the Feeny language used in the exercises, wrote the Lab exercises and the model answers, and did all the grading,
• Prof. Jonathan Bachrach for the invitation to give the course,
• The guest speakers (in order of appearance): Peter Deutsch, Allan Schiffman, David Ungar, Cliff Click, Lars Bak, Carl Friedrich Bolz, Thomas Würthinger and Michael Van De Vanter,
• My management at Oracle Labs for supporting this effort,
• Michael Haupt for sharing his VM course material,
• Christian Wimmer for assistance with Truffle, and
• All the students who participated, for their patience, enthusiasm, attention, questions, efforts and feedback.

 

Excellent Description of Sista! Nice job Eliot and Clément!

Chris Muller posted:

The mission-control app I’ve been working on this year appeared in a special episode of CBBC Newsround yesterday!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/36247103

The segment about Reserve Protection Agency with several screenshots of the app begins at time index 9:40 and runs until 12:25.  I recommend watching the entire episode, though, it’s a worthwhile message.

No one will know it is powered by Squeak but that’s okay, the important message is the one about the danger faced by rhinos as a species.

Dear Smalltalkers,

ESUG’16 registration is open!

http://www.esug.org/wiki/pier/Conferences/2016/Conference-Registration

We also provide you a selected list of hotels here:

http://www.esug.org/wiki/pier/Conferences/2016/Hotels

See you @ Prague,

Luc

—
Dr. Luc Fabresse
Associate-Professor in Computer Science
Mines Douai, Institut Mines-Telecom, France
http://car.mines-douai.fr/luc/

24rd International Smalltalk Joint Conference – Call for Contributions

Prague, Czech Republic

from 22 to 26 August 2016

http://www.esug.org/Conferences/2016/

This call includes:

Developer Forum

Smalltalk Technology Award

International Workshop

http://www.esug.org/wiki/pier/Conferences/2016/International-Workshop-IWST_16

Student Volunteer

http://www.esug.org/wiki/pier/Conferences/2016/Student-volunteers

———————————————————————-

You can support the ESUG conference in many different ways:

* Sponsor the conference. New sponsoring packages are described at

http://www.esug.org/wiki/pier/About/BecomeSponsor

* Submit a talk, a software or a paper to one of the events. See below.

* Attend the conference. We’d like to beat the previous record of

attendance (170 people at Amsterdam 2008)!

* Students can get free registration and hosting if they enrol

into the the Student Volunteers program. See below.

 

Developers Forum: International Smalltalk Developers Conference

————————————————————————

We are looking for YOUR experience on using Smalltalk. You will have

30 min for presentations and 45-60 min for hand-ons tutorial.

The list of topics for the normal talks and tutorials includes, but

is not limited to the following:

* Micro Services, Container, Cloud, Big Data,

* XP practices,  Development tools,  Experience reports

* Model driven development, Web development, Team management

* Meta-Modeling,  Security, New libraries & frameworks

* Educational material, Embedded systems and robotics

* SOA and Web services, Interaction with other programming languages

Teaching Pearls and Show us Your Business

—————————————–

– Show your business 10 min session (Get prepared!!)

– Teaching pearls : we want some session on how to teach some design

aspects. We want your tip and tricks to teach Smalltalk or OOP.

We expect to have several 10 to 15 min sessions aggregated.

!! How to submit?

————–

Submissions deadline is 15 of May 2015

Notification of acceptance will be on done on the fly.

More information at http://www.esug.org/conferences/2015

Pay attention: the places are limited so do not wait till the last minute to apply.

Prospective presenters should submit a request to Stephane.Ducasse at inria.fr AND USE THE following header [ESUG 2015 Developers].

Please follow the template below the email will be automatically processed!

Subject: [ESUG 2015 Developers] + your name

First Name:

Last Name:

Email where you can always be reached:

Title:

Type: Tutorial/Talk/Teaching Pearl

Abstract:

Bio:

Any presentation not respecting this form will be discarded automatically

 

International Workshop on Smalltalk Technologies

————————————————————————

Read the page: http://www.esug.org/wiki/pier/Conferences/2016/International-Workshop-IWST_16

 

Technology Award Competition

————————————————————————

The top 3 teams with the most innovative software will receive,

respectively, 500 Euros, 300 Euros and 200 Euros during an awards

ceremony at the conference. Developers of any Smalltalk-based

software are welcome to compete.

More information at http://www.esug.org/wiki/pier/Conferences/2016/Innovation-Technology-Awards

 

Student Volunteer Program

————————————————————————

If you are a student wanting to attend ESUG, have you considered

being a student volunteer? Student volunteers help keep the

conference running smoothly; in return, they have free

accommodations, while still having most of the time to enjoy the

conference.

More information at

http://www.esug.org/wiki/pier/Conferences/2016/

http://www.esug.org/wiki/pier/Conferences/2016/Student-volunteers

 

We hope to see you there and have fun together.

——————————————–

Stéphane Ducasse

http://stephane.ducasse.free.fr

http://www.synectique.eu / http://www.pharo.org

03 59 35 87 52

Assistant: Julie Jonas

03 59 57 78 50

03 59 35 86 16

1. Ducasse – Inria

40, avenue Halley,

Parc Scientifique de la Haute Borne, Bât.A, Park Plaza

Villeneuve d’Ascq 59650

France

Call for Papers

*** Workshop on Context-oriented Programming (COP) 2016 ***

July 19 (Tue), 2016

Co-located with ECOOP 2016 in Rome

http://2016.ecoop.org/track/COP-2016

===  Introduction  ===

Context information plays an increasingly important role in our information-centric world. Software systems must adapt to changing contexts over time, and must change even while they are running. Unfortunately, mainstream programming languages and development environments do not support this kind of dynamic change very well, leading developers to implementing complex designs to anticipate various dimensions of variability.

Context-oriented Programming (COP) directly supports variability depending on a wide range of dynamic attributes. In effect, it should be possible to dispatch run-time behavior on any property of the execution context. By now, several researchers have been working on notions approaching that idea, and implementations ranging from first prototypes to mature platform extensions used in commercial deployments have illustrated how multidimensional dispatch can indeed be supported effectively to achieve expressive run-time variation in behavior.

=== Topics ===

The previous editions of this workshop (ECOOP 2009–2015) have shown to be well-received. The goal of the 8th Workshop on Context-oriented Programming (COP-16) is to further establish context orientation as a common thread to language design, application development, and system support. Topics of interest include but are not limited to:

– Interesting application domains and scenarios

– Programming language abstractions for Context-oriented Programming (e.g. dynamic scoping, roles, traits, prototype-based extensions)

– Theoretical foundations for Context-oriented Programming (e.g. semantics, type systems)

– Configuration languages (e.g. feature description interpreters, transformational approaches)

– Interaction between non-functional programming concerns and Context-oriented Programming (e.g. security, persistence, concurrency, distribution).

– Interaction with other paradigms: event-based and reactive programming, object-oriented programming.

– Modularization approaches for Context-oriented Programming (e.g. aspects, modules, layers, plugins).

– Guidelines to include Context-oriented Programming in programs (e.g. best practices, patterns)

– Runtime support for Context-oriented Programming (e.g. reflection, dynamic binding)

– Implementation issues such as optimization, VM support, JIT compilation etc. for Context-oriented Programming

– Tool support (e.g. design tools, IDEs, debuggers).

=== Submissions ===

COP invites submissions of high-quality papers reporting original research, or describing innovative contributions to, or experience with Context-oriented Programming, its implementation, and application. Papers that depart significantly from established ideas and practices are particularly welcome.

Submissions must not have been published previously and must not be under review for any another refereed event or publication.

The program committee will evaluate each contributed paper based on its relevance, significance, clarity, and originality. Accepted papers will be published in the ACM Digital Library.

Papers are to be submitted via EasyChair (https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=cop2016). Papers must be written in English, be provided as PDF documents, and follow the ACM SIGPLAN Conference Format (10 point font, Times New Roman font family, numeric citation style, http://www.sigplan.org/Resources/Author/). They should not exceed 6 pages.

===  Important dates ===

Submissions: April 15, 2016

Notifications: May 13, 2016

COP-16: July 19, 2016

=== Organizers ===

Guido Salvaneschi, Technische Universität Darmstadt, Germany Robert Hirschfeld, Hasso Plattner Institute, University of Potsdam, Germany Atsushi Igarashi, Kyoto University, Japan Hidehiko Masuhara, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan

=== Program committee ===

Tomoyuki Aotani, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan Dave Clarke, Uppsala University, Sweden and KU Leuven, Belgium Rocco De Nicola, IMT Institute for Advanced Studies Lucca, Italy Coen De Roover, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium Pierpaolo Degano, University of Pisa, Italy Gorel Hedin, Lund University, Sweden Tetsuo Kamina, Ritsumeikan University, Japan Jens Lincke, Hasso Plattner Institute, University of Potsdam, Germany Harold Ossher, IBM, United States Mario Südholt – École des Mines de Nantes, France Didier Verna, EPITA / LRDE, France

===

Robert Hirschfeld

hirschfeld@acm.org

www.hirschfeld.org