Programming language design research has traditionally focused primarily on theoretical properties and performance considerations. But programming languages are interfaces that programmers use to write programs. Recent work has begun to explore how to integrate interdisciplinary methods, including qualitative and quantitative user studies, into the language design process. I’ll describe how we applied such methods in two different designs, Obsidian and Glacier, some of the insights we gained, and discuss the larger impact these emerging methods can have on the field.

Jonathan Aldrich is a Professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University. He teaches courses in programming languages, software engineering, and program analysis for quality and security. Prof. Aldrich directed CMU’s Software Engineering Ph.D. program from 2013-2019.

Dr. Aldrich’s research centers on programming languages and type systems that are deeply informed by software engineering considerations and human factors. His research contributions include verifying the correct implementation of an architectural design, modular formal reasoning about code, and API protocol specification and verification. His notable awards include an NSF CAREER award (2006), the Dahl-Nygaard Junior Prize (2007), the DARPA Computer Science Study Group, and an ICSE most influential paper award (2012). He served as general chair (2015), program chair (2017), and steering committee chair (2017-2019) of SPLASH and OOPSLA. Aldrich holds a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from Caltech and a Ph.D. from the University of Washington.