The Taub Faculty of Computer Science Events and Talks

Programming languages are a tool for human thought, expression, and work yet they are principally designed using mathematical and engineering techniques. In this talk, I will describe how our group has applied human-centered design techniques --- interviews, participatory design exercises, and qualitative analysis of developer forums --- in the design of three research programming systems (Plaid, Glacier, and Obsidian). I will speak frankly about the strengths and weaknesses of these approaches and discuss speculative new techniques. Short Bio: ========== Joshua Sunshine is a Systems Scientist in the Institute for Software Research at Carnegie Mellon University. He has broad research interests at the intersection of programming languages and software engineering. He is particularly interested in better understanding of the factors that influence the usability of reusable software components. He completed his Ph.D. in Software Engineering from Carnegie Mellon in December 2013. His dissertation focused on the usability of software libraries with ordering constraints (API protocols). He was advised by Jonathan Aldrich. He graduated from Brandeis University in 2004 and worked for almost four years as a software engineer before starting graduate school. ============================ Refreshments will be served from 14:15 Lecture starts at 14:30