[TYPES/announce] Call for Papers: Evaluation and Usability of Programming Languages and Tools (PLATEAU) 2009

[Shane Markstrum]

                       Call for Papers

                        PLATEAU 2009

                      First Workshop on
Evaluation and Usability of Programming Languages and Tools (PLATEAU)
            in conjunction with Onward!/OOPSLA 2009
                     October 25-29, 2009 (Orlando, FL)

        http://ecs.victoria.ac.nz/Events/PLATEAU/WebHome

SUBMISSION SITE

http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=plateau09

IMPORTANT DATES

Submission     August 31
Notification   Mid-September (before close of early registration for
OOPSLA/Onward!)
Final version  TBA
Workshop       TBA, one-half or one-full day between October 25 and 29

SCOPE

Programming languages exist to enable programmers to develop software
effectively. But how efficiently programmers can write software
depends on the usability of the languages and tools that they develop
with. The aim of this workshop is to discuss methods, metrics and
techniques for evaluating the usability of languages and language
tools. The supposed benefits of such languages and tools cover a large
space, including making programs easier to read, write, and maintain;
allowing programmers to write more flexible and powerful programs; and
restricting programs to make them more safe and secure.

We plan to gather the intersection of researchers in the programming
language, programming tool, and human-computer interaction communities
to share their research and discuss the future of evaluation and
usability of programming languages and tools. We are also interested
in the input of other members of the programming research community
working on related areas, such as refactoring, design patterns,
program analysis, program comprehension, software visualization,
end-user programming, and other programming language paradigms. Some
particular areas of interest are:

- empirical studies of programming languages
- methodologies and philosophies behind language and tool evaluation
- software design metrics and their relations to the underlying language
- user studies of language features and software engineering tools
- visual techniques for understanding programming languages
- critical comparisons of programming paradigms, such as
object-oriented vs. functional
- tools to support evaluating programming languages

SUBMISSIONS

Participants are invited to submit a position paper describing their
on going work. We will accept papers (from 4 to 6 pages) that describe
work-in-progress or recently completed work based on the themes and
goals of the workshop or related topics, report on experiences gained,
question accepted wisdom, raise challenging open problems, or propose
speculative new approaches. Longer submissions will be considered, but
all submissions must be fewer than 10 pages.

Submissions and final papers should be formatted using the ACM SIGPLAN
10 point format. Templates for Word and LaTeX are available at
http://www.acm.org/sigs/sigplan/authorInformation.htm; this site also
contains links to useful information on how to write effective
submissions.

Accepted submissions will be made available through this website and
workshop participants are encouraged to have read the position papers
before attending the workshop. Participants are also asked to prepare
a presentation to support their position paper.

ORGANIZERS (and members of the Committee)

Craig Anslow - Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand
Shane Markstrum - Bucknell University, USA
Emerson Murphy-Hill - University of British Columbia, Canada

PROGRAM COMMITTEE

Andrew Black - Portland State University, USA
Larry Constantine - University of Madeira, Portugal
Jeff Foster - University of Maryland, College Park, USA
Robert Fuhrer - IBM Research, USA
Donna Malayeri - EPFL, Switzerland/Carnegie Mellon University, USA
Stuart Marshall - Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand
Todd Millstein - University of California, Los Angeles, USA
James Noble - Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand
Ewan Tempero - University of Auckland, New Zealand

For more information, please see the workshop website:

http://ecs.victoria.ac.nz/Events/PLATEAU/WebHome