Discount method for programming language evaluation

Svetomir Kurtev, Tommy Aagaard Christensen, Bent Thomsen

Research output: Contribution to book/anthology/report/conference proceedingArticle in proceedingResearchpeer-review

1 Citation (Scopus)

Abstract

This paper presents work in progress on developing a Discount Method for Programming Language Evaluation inspired by the Discount Usability Evaluation method (Benyon 2010) and the Instant Data Analysis method (Kjeldskov et al. 2004). The method is intended to bridge the gap between small scale internal language design evaluation methods and large scale surveys and quantitative evaluation methods. The method is designed to be applicable even before a compiler or IDE is developed for a new language. To test the method, a usability evaluation experiment was carried out on the Quorum programming language (Stefik et al. 2016) using programmers with experience in C and C#. When comparing our results with previous studies of Quorum, most of the data was comparable though not strictly in agreement. However, the discrepancies were mainly related to the programmers pre-existing expectations of a language. The results show that our evaluation method could serve language designers as a low-cost way for evaluating programming languages, especially in the early stages of the language design process. Future work includes adjusting and improving the method in such a way that it becomes usable to novice programming language designers.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationProceedings of the 7th International Workshop on Evaluation and Usability of Programming Languages and Tools (PLATEAU 2016)
Number of pages8
PublisherAssociation for Computing Machinery
Publication date2016
Pages1-8
ISBN (Electronic)978-1-4503-4638-2
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2016
Event7th International Workshop on Evaluation and Usability of Programming Languages and Tools - Amsterdam, Netherlands
Duration: 1 Nov 20161 Nov 2016
Conference number: 7th
http://2016.splashcon.org/track/plateau2016

Conference

Conference7th International Workshop on Evaluation and Usability of Programming Languages and Tools
Number7th
Country/TerritoryNetherlands
CityAmsterdam
Period01/11/201601/11/2016
Internet address

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