Scope and Topics
We solicit original, unpublished research papers that focus on efforts to design, formalize, implement, and evaluate computing languages and development tools that are easier to learn, easier to use, and easier to understand. This includes languages and tools expressed not only as text, but through any other means (visual, sketch-based, gesture-based, or otherwise). This also includes languages and tools intended for a wide range of audiences, including professional software developers, novice programmers, or other any other people who find a need to express computational ideas. We also seek papers that address cognitive, social, cultural, and theoretical aspects of efforts to lower barriers to computing.
Areas of interest include, but are not limited to:
- The design, evaluation, and theory of visual languages
- End-user development and end-user programming
- Novel user interfaces for expressing code
- Human aspects of software development
- Debugging and program understanding
- Computer science education
- Software development tools
- Model-driven development
- Domain-specific languages
- Software visualization
- Query languages
A Note on Evaluations
Papers are expected to support their claims with appropriate evidence. For example, a paper that claims to improve programmer productivity is expected to demonstrate improved productivity; a paper that claims to be easier to use should demonstrate increased ease of use. However, not all claims necessarily need to be supported with empirical evidence or studies with people. For example, a paper that claims to make something feasible that was clearly infeasible might substantiate its claim through the existence of a functioning prototype. Moreover, there are many alternatives to empirical evidence that may be appropriate for your claims, including analytical methods or formal arguments.
Given this criteria, we encourage potential authors to think carefully about what claims their submission makes and what evidence would adequately support them.