Dagstuhl Seminar 20512
Educational Programming Languages and Systems Cancelled
( Dec 13 – Dec 18, 2020 )
Permalink
Please use the following short url to reference this page:
https://www.dagstuhl.de/20512
Replacement
Dagstuhl Seminar 22302:
Educational Programming Languages and Systems
(2022-07-24 - 2022-07-29)
(Details)
Organizers
- Neil Brown (King's College London, GB)
- Mark J. Guzdial (University of Michigan - Ann Arbor, US)
- Shriram Krishnamurthi (Brown University - Providence, US)
- Jens Mönig (SAP SE - Walldorf, DE)
Contact
- Andreas Dolzmann (for scientific matters)
- Annette Beyer (for administrative matters)
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.
Creative Commons BY 3.0 DE
Neil C. C. Brown, Mark Guzdial, Shriram Krishnamurthi, and Jens Mönig
Classification
- Computers and Society
- Human-Computer Interaction
- Programming Languages
Keywords
- programming environments
- errors
- learning progressions
- computer science education research
