2017 papers and critiques
The nature of program code
Should we treat program code as a text just like works of literature or as blocks in visual programming languages? Does styling and formatting of program code let us express something more about the program as in a stylized poem, or is it better to eliminate formatting from our code altogether? The first two papers looks at different ways of thinking and working with code.
Programming is writing is programming
Authors: Felienne Hermans, Marlies Aldewereld
Critique: Tomas Petricek
Paper abstract
Writing and programming are often seen as different: writing a creative profession, programming a technical one. Below the surface however, there is one striking similarity. This paper compares writing and programming and uncovers similarities between some of the steps of writing and programming workflows. We also observe differences, like the attention that writers spent on formatting and styling, and the opportunity for feedback in programming.
Critique abstract
The paper thus opens an interesting line of thought. What can we say by contrasting programming with writing? At the surface, writing and programming are both about communicating an idea. Programming research often tries to distill such ideas to their core essence. Analogies with writing can help us understand the flaws and limitations of this approach. A summary of a novel on Wikipedia is not the same thing as the novel. Furthermore, writers often use styling and formatting to add a twist to an idea.
Code is not just text: Why our code editors are inadequate tools
Author: Gregor Weber
Critique: Felienne Hermans
Paper abstract
The most popular code editors treat code like any other form of text. This leads to all kinds of problems, from syntax errors to code style inconsistencies. Alternative editors, namely visual programming languages, are available, but mostly in the form of educational tools and therefore have their own set of problems when used productively. But there might be a middle ground worth exploring, between the high productivity of traditional editors and the constrained interactivity of visual programming languages.
Critique abstract
This paper describes the current state of code editors, and how they could improve. I am super happy there is a paper about code editors, of course, since mu interest is in unconventional code editors, like Excel and Scratch. When reviewing this paper my attention is mostly drawn not to the described solution but to some of the assumptions the author is making. And that is not just because the solution is not there yet. There are some assumptions made in the paper that have not yet deserved enough attention.
Philosophy of Programming
What is programming, how does it help us understand the world and what are the origins of software systems? The two papers in this section explore programming from a more philosophical perspective. The first paper looks at different ways in which programming, as a scientific tool, can help us understand the world and the second explores stories that we tell ourselves about software.
The Act of Programming in Science
Author: Javier Burroni
Paper abstract
Classically, computers have been used as knowledge discovery tools insofar as the result of executing a program provides useful insight. For instance, the solution of a differential equation may help us understand the natural world, the value of a parameter of a statistical model may help us understand the probabilistic structure of a domain, the variable assignment maximising an objective function may help to further business goals. A secondary class of knowledge discovery stems from the act of using a programming language. By modeling a domain computationally, the developer can discover new and interesting properties of that domain, and better convey those insights to others. The purpose of this work is twofold: First, we want to show that programming languages can help their users achieve knowledge discovery moments and, secondly, that this property is the least exploited feature of programming languages in the general science community. We want to outline a research program with the objective of making scientific programming more efficient in its ultimate goal of knowledge discovery.
From Software Creationism to Software Evolutionism
Author: François-René Rideau
Paper abstract
The lives we live are woven around the stories we tell. This is true of programmers as of all humans. Now the greatest of all stories are origin stories. In a first part, I will examine the origin stories of software, from simple tales of software creation to elaborate theories of software evolution. As I do, I will relate these stories to the tools they explain and the technological realities we bring about by following them. In a second part, I will conclude by reflecting on storytelling, on the progression of the above stories, and on what lies beyond. Stories are fun! And they subtly inform us. Let me tell you a good story…
Emerging ideas for building systems
What will software development of the future look like? The papers in this section look at two novel trends in software engineering that go against the mainstream conventional ideas. First, what if errors were a good thing that help improve the software system as they happen? Second, what if databases did not store data, but only gave a view of the world?
Principles of Antifragile Software
Author: Martin Montperrus
Paper abstract
There are many software engineering concepts and techniques related to software errors. But is this enough? Have we already completely explored the software engineering noosphere with respect to errors and reliability? In this paper, I discuss an novel concept, called “software antifragility”, that is unconventional and has the capacity to improve the way we engineer errors and dependability in a disruptive manner. This paper first discusses the foundations of software antifragilty, from classical fault tolerance to the most recent advances on automatic software repair and fault injection in production. This paper then explores the relation between the antifragility of the development process and the antifragility of the resulting software product.
A Certain Tendency of the Database Community
Author: Cristopher Meiklejohn Critique: Stephen Kell
Paper abstract
We posit that striving for distributed systems that provide “single system image” semantics is fundamentally flawed and at odds with how systems operate in the physical world. We realize the database as an optimization of this system: a required, essential optimization in practice that facilitates central data placement and ease of access to participants in a system. We motivate a new model of computation that is designed to address the problems of computation over “eventually consistent” information in a large-scale distributed system.
Critique abstract
This is a bold paper, backed by an expansive vision for what the world’s information systems could become. However, it appears to be rushing too headlong for a particular target, without properly surveying the complete territory of computer systems and their development. It is in fact focused on “systems that have to go to very large scale” – mentioned in the workshop presentation but not in the paper text. My reaction is to ask: which systems are those?
Metaphors for new paradigms
The traditional view of software components sees them as objects that hide their inner functioning and expose a limited public interface. The papers in this section rethink this approach by looking at other metaphors for building systems. What would we gain by seeing software more as interlinked documents or as avatars that provide a working simulacrum of a part of a system.
What Can Software Learn from Hypermedia?
Authors: Philip Tchernavskij, Clemens Nylandsted Klokmose, Michel Beaudouin-Lafon
Paper abstract
Most of our interactions with the digital world are mediated by apps: desktop, web, or mobile applications. Apps impose artificial limitations on collaboration among users, distribution across devices, and the changing procedures that constantly occur in real work. These limitations are partially due to the engineering principles of encapsulation and program-data separation. By contrast, the field of hypermedia envisions collaboration, distribution and flexible practices as fundamental features of software. We discuss shareable dynamic media, an alternative model for software that unifies hypermedia and interactive systems, and Webstrates, an experimental implementation of that model. We give examples of patterns and challenges for software architecture that have emerged in our experimentation with Webstrates, and show that it subverts the principles of encapsulation and program-data separation.
Tracing a Paradigm for Externalization: Avatars and the GPII Nexus
Authors: Colin Clark, Antranig Basman
Critique: Philip Tchernavskij
Paper abstract
We will situate the concept of an avatar (a working simulacrum of part of a system separated from it in space or time) with respect to traditional concepts of programming language and systems design. Whilst much theory and practice argues in favour of insulation (the creation of architectural boundaries prohibiting the leakage of information) we will find that many successful systems take a diametrically opposed approach. We name this family of systems as those based on externalised state transfer. Rather than hiding implementation details behind APIs, object interfaces or similar, these systems actively advertise their internal structure and its coordinates via data and metadata. Examples of these systems include RESTful web applications, MIDI devices, and the DWARF debugging file format. We discuss such systems and how we can purposefully design new systems embodying such virtues in a more distilled form.
Critique abstract
I find myself in violent agreement with Colin Clark and Antranig Basman. In this critique, I relate their paper to some Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) literature. HCI offers a tradition of studying computer-mediated human activity, and helps us build on the presented pattern. To illustrate this, I speculate on what sort of non-program artifacts avatars could beget. I also relate the concept of avatars to transclusion, as presented in our paper, What can software learn from hypermedia?. This paper is also instructive for HCI readers, in its ability to connect the means of programming with the ends of non-programmers. I conclude with some remarks on the research agenda that is implied therein.
2018 papers and critiques
Lector in Codigo or The Role of the Reader
Author: Alvaro Videla
Critique: Luke Church
Paper abstract
In this article I want to explore the relation between the process of writing computer programs with that of writing literary works of fiction. I want to see what parallels can we trace from the ideas presented by Umberto Eco in Lector in Fabula and Six Walks in the Fictional Woods, with the way we write programs today. The goal of this article is to ask–and try to answer–the following questions: what can we learn as programmers from literary theory? What ideas can we incorporate from that discipline into our day to day programming activities, so we write code that’s easier to understand for other humans (or our future selves)?
Critique abstract
In ‘Lector in Codigo’, Videla challenges us to write for people and computers simultaneously. I examine the implications of this chal- lenge.
Semprola: A Semiotic Programming Language
Author: Oli Sharpe
Critique: Antranig Basman
Paper abstract
Most people interested in developing new programming languages or programming environments are looking at how to improve the syntax and semantics of the program text or at tools that help make programmers more productive at crafting the program text. What we need is a more fundamental change to the conception of what a program is. This paper introduces a new, Semiotic Programming environment in which we program with signs in a context, rather than with symbols in a text file and where we treat dialogue rather than functions as the dominant organising principle of our code. All of the information held in this environment is managed in a distributed, semiotic graph that is organized into multiple ontological spaces. Taken together these enable our programs and data to have greater semantic depth. Finally the paper gives a brief introduction to Semprola, a Semiotic Programming Language that can be used in this Semiotic Programming environment.
Critique abstract
We supply a critique of the paper Semprola: A Semiotic Programming Language, suggesting directions in which its work of bringing semiotics to programming can be refined, and supplying opinions on areas where it may be refounded.
Files as Directories: Some Thoughts on Accessing Structured Data Within Files
Author: Raphael Wimmer
Critiques: Philip Tchernavskij, Stephen Kell
Paper abstract
This is paper explores the concept of files as directories (FAD) as a unified interface to structured data within a file by representing such a file as (virtual) directory and the structured data as subdirectories and subfiles. Transparent conversion of files and their structured data into directory trees is to be handled by virtual filesystem providers. This allows for arbitrary applications and programming languages to read and write data within supported file types without the need to understand the file format - e.g., in order to modify pixel values within an image file, paragraphs in a text document, or settings in a configuration file. Advantages of this approach compared to API-mediated file access might include better learnability, modularity, explorability, synchronous access, better integration of proprietary applications, and a few other nice features. While technical issues of the FAD concept have been discussed by developers in the past, no major operating system allows FAD at the moment. In this paper I present concept, advantages, limitations, and use cases of FAD.
Critique 1 abstract
In this critique of Files as Directories (FAD) by Raphael Wimmer, I argue that FAD as presented applies primarily to traditional programming tasks, consider FAD as a broader subversion of app-like software, and speculate about the hypothetical design space of FAD beyond programming.
Critique 2 abstract
In this critique I argue that the motivations and direction of the ‘files as directories’ idea are sound, but the conceptual difficulties are considerable yet non-obvious, and are not limited to those identified by the author. I highlight a selection of concerns, including Unix’s latent pluralism, the blurred boundary between naming and computation in languages, and issues of bidirectionality, semantic diversity and support for economical migration.
An Anatomy of Interaction: Co-occurrences and Entanglements
Authors: Antranig Basman, Philip Tchernavskij, Simon Bates, Michel Beaudouin-Lafon
Critique: Tomas Petricek
Paper abstract
We present a new taxonomy for describing the conditions and implementation of interactions. Current mechanisms for embedding interaction in software promote a hard separation between the programmers who produce the software, and the communities who go on to use it. In order to support open ecologies of function and fabrication, where this separation is negotiated by communities of users and designers, we need to reconceive those mechanisms. We describe interaction in two phases: Co-occurrence, the prerequisite conditions for an interaction to take place; and entanglement, the temporary coupling and interplay between elements participating in the interaction. We then sketch a blueprint of a system where those phases and their adjacent mechanisms enable communities of users to build and use interactive software. There are many ways of conceiving this new design space, and we present three dominant metaphors which we have employed so far, based on chemical reactions, quantum physics and cooking. We exhibit different systems which we have implemented based on these metaphors, and sketch how future systems will further empower citizens to design and inhabit their own interactions, express ownership over them and share them with communities of interest.
Critique abstract
The paper by Basman et al. suggests that we think about programming in terms of interaction rather than algorithms. This call needs to be interpreted in a broad sense – the idea of interaction is not just another programming abstraction, but different way of structuring our thinking about programming. This includes thinking about how users can interact with the software more generally, but also what are effective metaphorical ways of thinking about software. In this critique, we review some of the core ideas presented by Basman et al. We consider what programming substrate might be used to implement the systems proposed by Basman et al. That is, systems that blur the boundaries between users and developers. We also review a number of systems that are technically similar to co-occurrences and entanglements and we reconsider them through the perspective of the research paradigm based on interaction.