Registered user since Fri 25 Apr 2014
Robert Hirschfeld is a Professor of Computer Science at the Hasso Plattner Institute and the Digital Engineering Faculty at the University of Potsdam and Chair of its Software Architecture Group. With his group, he investigates various means of improving the overall programming experience for both professional and non-professional programmers. He is working on dynamic programming languages, development tools, and runtime environments to make interactive, live programming more approachable. His preferred environment for exploring ideas is Squeak/Smalltalk.
Robert served as a visiting professor at the Tokyo Institute of Technology [東京工業大学] and The University of Tokyo [東京大学], Japan. He was a senior researcher with DoCoMo Euro-Labs, the European research facility of NTT DoCoMo Japan, where he worked on infrastructure components for next generation mobile communication systems with a focus on dynamic service adaptation and context-oriented programming. Prior to joining DoCoMo Euro-Labs, he was a principal engineer at Windward Solutions in Sunnyvale, California, where he designed and implemented distributed object systems, consulted in the area of object database technologies, and developed innovative software products and applications.
Robert received a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Technische Universität Ilmenau, Germany.
Contributions
2025
2024
PAINT
SPLASH
- Committee Member in Onward! Steering Committee within the Onward! Essays-track
- Steering Committee Member in Steering Committee
- Committee Member in Program Committee within the Onward! Papers-track
- Author of Talking to Objects in Natural Language: Toward Semantic Tools for Exploratory Programming within the Onward! Papers-track
- Committee Member in Steering Committee within the Onward! Papers-track
- Author of Beyond Procedure Calls as Component Glue: Connectors Deserve Metaclass Status within the Onward! Papers-track
- Committee Member in Program Committee within the Onward! Essays-track
VL/HCC
‹Programming›
- Committee Member in Program Committee within the Research Papers-track
- Author of Broadening the View of Live Programmers: Integrating a Cross-cutting Perspective on Run-time Behavior Into a Live Programming Environment within the Research Papers-track
- Committee Member of The Programming Experience Workshop within the Workshops-track
- Artifact Evaluation Co-Chair in Artifact Evaluation Committee within the Artifacts-track
- Committee Member of The Programming Experience Workshop within the Workshops-track
- Committee Member in Jury within the Student Research Competition-track
- Steering Committee Member in Steering Committee
- Artifact Evaluation Co-Chair in Organizing Committee
Programming with AI
PX
- Author of Examples out of Thin Air: AI-generated Dynamic Context to Assist Program Comprehension by Example within the PX/24-track
- Committee Member in Program Committee within the PX/24-track
- Author of Multi-threaded OpenSmalltalk VM: Choosing a Strategy for Parallelization within the PX/24-track
- Author of Unanticipated Progress Indication: Continuous Responsiveness for Courageous Exploration within the PX/24-track
- Committee Member in Organizing Committee within the PX/24-track
- Author of Implementing Babylonian/G by Putting Examples into Game Contexts within the PX/24-track
2023
COP
PAINT
- Author of A Penny a Function: Towards Cost Transparent Cloud Programming within the PAINT-track
- Committee Member in Program Committee within the PAINT-track
- Committee Member in Organizing Committee within the PAINT-track
- Author of Toward Studying Example-based Live Programming in CS/SE Education within the PAINT-track
- Author of Visual Replacements: Cross-language Domain-specific Representations in Structured Editors within the PAINT-track
SPLASH
- Committee Member in Steering Committee
- Onward! Essays PC Chair in Organizing Committee
- Committee Member in Steering Committee within the Onward! Papers-track
- Author of Time-awareness in Object-exploration Tools: Toward In Situ Omniscient Debugging within the Onward! Papers-track
- Onward! Essays PC Chair in Program Committee within the Onward! Essays-track
- Committee Member in Onward! Steering Committee within the Onward! Essays-track
International Conference on Program Comprehension
‹Programming›
PX
- Author of Probe Log: Visualizing the Control Flow of Babylonian Programming within the PX/23-track
- Author of Object-centric Time-Travel Debugging: Exploring Traces of Objects within the PX/23-track
- Organizing Committee in Organizing Committee within the PX/23-track
- Committee Member in Program Committee within the PX/23-track
2022
DLS
PAINT
- Organizer in Organizing Committee within the Programming Abstractions and Interactive Notations, Tools, and Environments-track
- Committee Member in Program Committee within the Programming Abstractions and Interactive Notations, Tools, and Environments-track
- Author of Toward a VR-Native Live Programming Environment within the Programming Abstractions and Interactive Notations, Tools, and Environments-track
SPLASH
- Author of Competitive Debugging: Toward Contests Promoting Debugging as a Skill within the Posters-track
- Organizer of Programming Abstractions and Interactive Tools, Notations, and Environments (PAINT) within the Workshops-track
- Author of Competitive Debugging: Toward Contests Promoting Debugging as a Skill within the Onward! Papers-track
- Author of Digital Crochet: Toward a Visual Language for Pattern Description within the Onward! Papers-track
- Author of Relentless Repairability or Reckless Reuse: Whether or Not to Rebuild a Concern with Your Familiar Tools and Materials within the Onward! Essays-track
COP
‹Programming›
MoreVMs
PX
- Session Chair of PX/22 (part of PX/22)
- Committee Member in Program Committee within the PX/22-track
- Author of Example Mining - Assisting Example Creation to Enhance Code Comprehension within the PX/22-track
- Committee Member in Organizing Committee within the PX/22-track
- Author of Toward Understanding Task Complexity in Maintenance-based Studies of Programming Tools within the PX/22-track
- Committee Member in Organizing Committee within the PX/22-track
2021
SPLASH
VL/HCC
COP
‹Programming›
PX
- Author of Towards exploratory understanding of software using test suites within the PX/21-track
- Committee Member in Organizing Committee within the PX/21-track
- Committee Member in Program Committee within the PX/21-track
- Author of Exploring Modal Locking in Window Manipulation within the PX/21-track
2020
SPLASH
- Committee Member in Onward! Steering Committee within the Onward! Essays-track
- ECOOP PC Chair of Opening Session within the Opening-track
- Committee Member in Review Committee within the OOPSLA-track
- Committee Member in Onward! Steering Committee within the Onward! Papers-track
- Author of Example-Based Live Programming for Everyone: Building Language-agnostic Tools for Live Programming with LSP and GraalVM within the Onward! Papers-track
ECOOP
COP
Mining Software Repositories
Salon (<2019: Salon des Refusés)
‹Programming›
2019
SPLASH
DLS
LIVE
META
COP
- Author of Implementing Babylonian/S by Putting Examples into Contexts: Tracing Instrumentation for Example-based Live Programming as a Use Case for Context-oriented Programming within the COP 2019-track
- Committee Member in Program Committee within the COP 2019-track
- Organizing Committee in Organizing Committee within the COP 2019-track
‹Programming›
- Committee Member in Program Committee within the Research Papers-track
- Author of Exploratory and Live, Programming and Coding: A Literature Study Comparing Perspectives on Liveness within the Research Papers-track
- Author of Babylonian-Style Programming: Design and Implementation of an Integration of Live Examples into General-purpose Source Code within the Research Papers-track
- Committee Member in Steering Committee
PX
- Author of PolyJuS: A Squeak/Smalltalk-based Polyglot Notebook System for the GraalVM within the PX/19-track
- Committee Member in Program Committee within the PX/19-track
- Author of Faster Feedback through Lexical Test Prioritization within the PX/19-track
- Committee Member in Organizing Committee within the PX/19-track
Salon (<2019: Salon des Refusés)
2018
DLS
Onward!
COP
- Author of Activity Contexts: Improving Modularity in Blockchain-based Smart Contracts using Context-oriented Programming within the COP-track
- Author of Cross-cutting Commentary: Narratives for Multi-party Mechanisms and Concerns within the COP-track
- Committee Member in Organizing Committee within the COP-track
Live Adaptation of Software SYstems
‹Programming›
PX
- Organizing Committee in Program Committee within the PX/18-track
- Author of The Exploration Workspace: Interleaving the Implementation and Usage of Plain Objects within the PX/18-track
- Organizing Committee in Organizing Committee within the PX/18-track
- Author of Do Java Programmers Write Better Python? – Studying Off-Language Code Quality on GitHub within the PX/18-track
2017
DLS
PX
- Organizing Committee in Program Committee within the PX/17.2-track
- Author of Living in your Programming Environment: Enabling Exploratory Programming for Productivity Tools within the PX/17.2-track
- Author of Towards Concept-aware Programming Environments for Guiding Software Modularity within the PX/17.2-track
- Author of Designing a Live Development Experience for Web Components within the PX/17.2-track
- Organizing Chair in Organizing Committee within the PX/17.2-track
COP
Live Adaptation of Software SYstems
‹Programming›
- Committee Member in Program Committee within the Research Papers-track
- Steering Committee Chair in Steering Committee
- Author of Active Expressions: Basic Building Blocks for Reactive Programming within the Research Papers-track
- Steering Committee Chair of Steering Committee Meeting (part of Organizational)
- Steering Committee Chair of Steering Committee Meeting within the Organizational-track
- Author of Edit Transactions: Dynamically Scoped Change Sets for Controlled Updates in Live Programming within the Research Papers-track
PX
- Author of Squeak Makes a Good Python Debugger within the PX-track
- Session Chair of Session IV (part of PX)
- Committee Member in Organizing Committee within the PX-track
- Session Chair of Session III (part of PX)
- Organizing Committee in Program Committee within the PX-track
- Author of Exploratory Development of Data-intensive Applications within the PX-track
- Session Chair of Session II (part of PX)
- Session Chair of Session I (part of PX)
2016
Onward!
SPLASH
DLS
COP
- Author of Optimizing Sideways Composition: Fast Context-Oriented Programming in ContextPyPy within the COP-track
- Author of Classes as Layers: Rewriting Design Patterns with COP - Alternative Implementations of Decorator, Observer and Visitor within the COP-track
- Author of Transaction Layers: Controlling Granularity of Change in Live Programming Environments using COP within the COP-track
- Committee Member in Program Committee within the COP-track
- Committee Member in Organizing Committee within the COP-track
PX
- Session Chair of Session 4 (part of PX)
- Author of Evolving User Interfaces From Within Self-sustaining Programming Environments: Exploring the Project Concept of Squeak/Smalltalk to Bootstrap UIs. within the PX-track
- Session Chair of Session 3 (part of PX)
- Committee Member in Organizing Committee within the PX-track
- Session Chair of Session 1 (part of PX)
- Organizing Committe in Program Committee within the PX-track
- Author of How Live are Live Programming Systems? – Benchmarking the Response Times of Live Programming Environments. within the PX-track
- Session Chair of Session 2 (part of PX)
- Author of Towards Gaze Control in Programming Environments. within the PX-track
Modularity
Live Adaptation of Software SYstems
Reflection and Runtime Meta-Programming Techniques
Constrained and Reactive Objects
Language Modularity à La Mode
2015
SPLASH
- Author of Checks and Balances: Constraint Solving without Surprises in Object-Constraint Programming Languages within the OOPSLA-track
- Author of Checks and Balances - Constraint Solving without Surprises in Object-Constraint Programming Languages within the OOPSLA Artifacts-track
- Onward! 2013 Papers Chair in Steering Committee
Onward!
DLS
Future Programming Workshop
COP
- Author of Efficient Layered Method Execution in ContextAmber within the COP-track
- Committee Member in Program Committee within the COP-track
- Author of Connecting Object Constraints with Context-oriented Programming: Scoping Constraints with Layers and Activating Layers with Constraints within the COP-track
2014
SPLASH
Onward!
DLS
- Presenter of SqueakJS - A Modern and Practical Smalltalk That Runs in Any Browser within the DLS-track
- Presenter of Object Versioning to Support Recovery Needs: Using Proxies to Preserve Previous Development States in Lively within the DLS-track
- Committee Member in Program Committee within the DLS-track