Design of an Empirical Study for Comparing the Usability of Concurrent Programming Languages

被引:10
作者
Nanz, Sebastian [1 ]
Torshizi, Faraz [2 ]
Pedroni, Michela [1 ]
Meyer, Bertrand [1 ]
机构
[1] Swiss Fed Inst Technol, Zurich, Switzerland
[2] Univ Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada
来源
2011 FIFTH INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON EMPIRICAL SOFTWARE ENGINEERING AND MEASUREMENT (ESEM 2011) | 2011年
基金
加拿大自然科学与工程研究理事会;
关键词
empirical study; concurrency; programming languages; usability;
D O I
10.1109/ESEM.2011.41
中图分类号
TP31 [计算机软件];
学科分类号
081202 ; 0835 ;
摘要
The recent turn towards multicore processing architectures has made concurrency an important part of mainstream software development. As a result, an increasing number of developers have to learn to write concurrent programs, a task that is known to be hard even for the expert. Language designers are therefore working on languages that promise to make concurrent programming "easier". However, the claim that a new language is more usable than another cannot be supported by purely theoretical considerations, but calls for empirical studies. In this paper, we present the design of a study to compare concurrent programming languages with respect to comprehending and debugging existing programs and writing correct new programs. A critical challenge for such a study is avoiding the bias that might be introduced during the training phase and when interpreting participants' solutions. We address these issues by the use of self-study material and an evaluation scheme that exposes any subjective decisions of the corrector, or eliminates them altogether. We apply our design to a comparison of two object-oriented languages for concurrency, multithreaded Java and SCOOP ( Simple Concurrent Object-Oriented Programming), in an academic setting. We obtain results in favor of SCOOP even though the study participants had previous training in writing multithreaded Java programs.
引用
收藏
页码:325 / 334
页数:10
相关论文
共 50 条
  • [31] Influence of Personality on Programming Styles an Empirical Study
    Karimi, Zahra
    Baraani-Dastjerdi, Ahmad
    Ghasem-Aghaee, Nasser
    Wagner, Stefan
    [J]. JOURNAL OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY RESEARCH, 2015, 8 (04) : 38 - 56
  • [32] An empirical study on bugs in TypeScript programming language
    Wang, Ziyuan
    Fang, Yun
    Wang, Nannan
    [J]. JOURNAL OF SYSTEMS AND SOFTWARE, 2025, 226
  • [33] Evaluating the extreme programming system - An empirical study
    Sfetsos, P
    Angelis, L
    Stamelos, I
    Bleris, GL
    [J]. EXTREME PROGRAMMING AND AGILE PROCESSES IN SOFTWARE ENGINEERING, PROCEEDINGS, 2004, 3092 : 227 - 230
  • [34] Investigating the extreme programming system–An empirical study
    Panagiotis Sfetsos
    Lefteris Angelis
    Ioannis Stamelos
    [J]. Empirical Software Engineering, 2006, 11 : 269 - 301
  • [35] An Empirical Study on Bugs in Rust Programming Language
    Yu, Sijie
    Wang, Ziyuan
    [J]. 2024 IEEE 24TH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON SOFTWARE QUALITY, RELIABILITY AND SECURITY, QRS, 2024, : 296 - 305
  • [36] Investigating the extreme programming system - An empirical study
    Sfetsos, P
    Angelis, L
    Stamelos, I
    [J]. EMPIRICAL SOFTWARE ENGINEERING, 2006, 11 (02) : 269 - 301
  • [37] Improvement of usability in user interfaces for massive data analysis: an empirical study
    Iniguez-Jarrin, Carlos
    Ignacio Panach, Jose
    Pastor Lopez, Oscar
    [J]. MULTIMEDIA TOOLS AND APPLICATIONS, 2020, 79 (17-18) : 12257 - 12288
  • [38] An Empirical Study of the Influence of Static Type Systems on the Usability of Undocumented Software
    Mayer, Clemens
    Hanenberg, Stefan
    Robbes, Romain
    Tanter, Eric
    Stefik, Andreas
    [J]. ACM SIGPLAN NOTICES, 2012, 47 (10) : 683 - 702
  • [39] ASSESSING THE USABILITY OF UNIVERSITY WEBSITES: AN EMPIRICAL STUDY ON NAMIK KEMAL UNIVERSITY
    Mentes, S. Ahmet
    Turan, Aykut H.
    [J]. TURKISH ONLINE JOURNAL OF EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGY, 2012, 11 (03): : 61 - 69
  • [40] What Happened to Remote Usability Testing? An Empirical Study of Three Methods
    Andreasen, Morten Sieker
    Nielsen, Henrik Villemann
    Schroder, Simon Ormholt
    Stage, Jan
    [J]. CONFERENCE ON HUMAN FACTORS IN COMPUTING SYSTEMS, VOLS 1 AND 2, 2007, : 1405 - 1414