CAREER: The Rational Programmer, An Investigative Method for Programming Language Pragmatics

职业：理性程序员，编程语言语用学的一种研究方法

基本信息

批准号：
2237984
负责人：
Christos Dimoulas
金额：
$ 53.48万
依托单位：
Northwestern University
依托单位国家：
美国
项目类别：
Continuing Grant
财政年份：
2023
资助国家：
美国
起止时间：
2023-06-01 至 2028-05-31
项目状态：
未结题

来源：
https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2237984&HistoricalAwards=false
关键词：
CAREER Rational Programmer Investigative Method

项目摘要

The productivity of developers depends on the quality of the available programming languages: whether they support testing adequately, help with locating and fixing mistakes, or contribute to the maintenance of software, which often survives its creators. If a programming language does not support these routine development tasks, the developer is forced to resort to labor-intensive and ineffective workarounds. The goal of this project is to develop a scientific instrument for examining how well a programming language supports developers in different work contexts. The project's novelty is the instrument itself: a method for constructing automated, large-scale simulations that (in)validate hypotheses about how a developer can benefit from a language to complete a work. The project's results are going to impact: (i) language designers and researchers: the method provides the means for evaluating their products; (ii) instructors: the evaluations yield concrete scenarios and strategies for demonstrating the value of a language feature or tool in action.While simulations have a long history in computer science, the project's method puts them to new use in programming languages. In the project's setting, the heart of each simulation is the rational programmer, an algorithmic abstraction of how a developer reacts to information from language implementations in the context of a work situation. In other words, a rational programmer embodies a strategy that a developer can employ while working in a context towards a goal. When the simulation of a rational programmer on a large number of scenarios fails to reach the developer's goal, it invalidates a hypothesis about the developer strategy. It points designers and researchers to a problematic aspect of the language. When it succeeds, it informs instructors how to teach students the effective use of this part of the language. This project aims to put to test the feasibility of the rational-programmer method by conducting three major investigations in three different contexts: testing, performance profiling, and language expressiveness.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

开发人员的生产力取决于可用编程语言的质量：无论它们是充分支持测试，帮助定位和解决错误，还是有助于维护软件的维护，而软件通常可以在其创建者中幸存下来。如果编程语言不支持这些常规开发任务，则开发人员将被迫诉诸于劳动密集型和无效的解决方法。该项目的目的是开发一种科学工具，以检查编程语言在不同工作环境中对开发人员的支持。该项目的新颖性是工具本身：一种构建自动化大规模模拟的方法，该方法（在）验证了开发人员如何从语言中受益的假设来完成工作。该项目的结果将影响：（i）语言设计师和研究人员：该方法提供了评估其产品的手段；（ii）讲师：评估产生了具体的场景和策略，以证明语言功能或工具的价值。虽然模拟在计算机科学方面的历史悠久，但该项目的方法使它们在编程语言中新使用。在项目的设置中，每个模拟的核心是理性程序员，这是开发人员在工作状况背景下从语言实现中对信息做出反应的算法抽象。换句话说，一个理性的程序员体现了开发人员在目标方面的工作时可以采用的策略。当对大量场景的理性程序员模拟未能达到开发人员的目标时，它会使有关开发人员策略的假设无效。它将设计师和研究人员指向语言的问题。成功后，它会通知讲师如何有效地使用该语言的有效使用。该项目的目的是通过在三种不同的情况下进行三项重大调查来测试理性推出器方法的可行性：测试，表现分析和语言表达性。该奖项反映了NSF的法定任务，并被认为是值得通过基金会的知识分子优点和更广泛的审查标准来通过评估来通过评估来支持的。