Educational Programming Languages and Systems

Motivation

Programming languages and environments designed for educating beginners are typically different from those designed for professionals. Professionals expect more features and can build upon sophisticated concepts (in the semantics, compiler, run-time system, and more). In contrast, languages for beginners should lean the opposite way to minimize complexity, surprise, and frustration.

Designing such languages and environments requires a mix of skills. Some knowledge of programming language issues (semantics and implementation) is essential. But the designer must also take into account human-factors aspects (in the syntax and error messages), cognitive aspects (in picking features, reducing cognitive load, and staging learning), and educational aspects (making the language match the pedagogy). In short, this is a broad and interdisciplinary problem.

Due to peculiarities of existing venues (there is no conference on this topic) and the broad inter-disciplinarity of this topic, there have been few events – and none in recent memory – that focus on the learner’s experience of programming. This Dagstuhl Seminar brings together experts in building programming languages and environment for beginners. We place a special emphasis on demonstrations and inviting each other to try our languages and environments, with a goal of exchanging ideas and setting an agenda for future work.