Where UX meets PL

Programming is cognitively demanding, and too difficult. LIVE is a workshop exploring new user interfaces that improve the immediacy, usability, and learnability of programming. Whereas PL research traditionally focuses on programs, LIVE focuses more on the activity of programming.

Themes

Programmers don’t materialize programs out of thin air, but construct them out of existing programs. Embracing this insight leads to a different focus at LIVE compared to traditional PL workshops. Here are some of the qualities that we care about:

• Live. Live programming systems give the programmer immediate feedback on the output of a program as it is being edited, replacing the edit-compile-debug cycle with a fluid programming experience. Liveness can also mean providing feedback about how the static meaning of the program is changing, such as its type.
• Structured. A program is highly structured and meaningful to the programmer, even in traditionally invalid states. “Structure-aware” programming environments understand and preserve that structure, and allow operations at the level of the structure, rather than at the level of raw text.
• Tangible. In the traditional view of programs, execution takes place behind the scenes, and leaves little record of what happened. We are interested in programming systems that make execution transparent, tangible and explorable.
• Concrete. People find it easier to start with concrete examples and generalize afterwards. Programming tools tailored to people will support this mode of working.

The majority of LIVE submissions are demonstrations of novel programming systems. Technical papers, and insightful and clearly articulated experience reports, demos of historic systems, literature reviews, and position papers are also welcome.

Our goal is to provide a supportive venue where early-stage work receives constructive criticism. Whether graduate students or tenured faculty, researchers need a forum to discuss new ideas and get helpful feedback from their peers. Towards that end, we will allot about ten minutes for discussion after every presentation.