Broadening the View of Live Programmers: Integrating a Cross-cutting Perspective on Run-time Behavior Into a Live Programming EnvironmentVol. 8
Live programming provides feedback on run-time behavior through visualizing concrete values of expressions close to the source code. When using such a local perspective on run-time behavior, programmers have to mentally reconstruct the control flow if they want to understand the relation between observed values. As this requires complete and correct knowledge of all relevant code, this reconstruction is impractical for larger programs as well as in the case of unexpected program behavior. In turn, cross-cutting perspectives on run-time behavior can visualize the actual control flow directly. At the same time, cross-cutting perspectives are often difficult to navigate due to the large number of run-time events. We propose to integrate cross-cutting perspectives into live programming environments based on local perspectives, so that the two complement each other: the cross-cutting perspective provides an overview of the run-time behavior; the local perspective provides detailed feedback as well as points of interest to navigate the cross-cutting perspective. In this paper, we present a cross-cutting perspective prototype in the form of a call tree browser integrated into the Babylonian/S live programming environment. In an exploratory user study, we observed that programmers found the tool useful for debugging, code comprehension, and navigation. Finally, we discuss how our prototype illustrates how the features of live programming environments may serve as the basis for other powerful dynamic development tools.
Thu 14 MarDisplayed time zone: Amsterdam, Berlin, Bern, Rome, Stockholm, Vienna change
10:30 - 12:00 | Research Papers 4Research Papers at M:Teknodromen Chair(s): Guido Salvaneschi University of St. Gallen | ||
10:30 30mTalk | Broadening the View of Live Programmers: Integrating a Cross-cutting Perspective on Run-time Behavior Into a Live Programming EnvironmentVol. 8 Research Papers Patrick Rein University of Potsdam; Hasso Plattner Institute, Christian Flach Hasso Plattner Institute, University of Potsdam, Germany, Stefan Ramson Hasso Plattner Institute, Germany, Eva Krebs Hasso Plattner Institute (HPI), University of Potsdam, Germany, Robert Hirschfeld University of Potsdam; Hasso Plattner Institute Link to publication DOI | ||
11:00 30mTalk | A VM-agnostic and backwards compatible protected modifier for dynamically-typed languagesVol. 8 Research Papers Iona Thomas Univ. Lille, Inria, CNRS, Centrale Lille, UMR 9189 - CRIStAL, Vincent Aranega Univ. Lille, CNRS, Inria, Centrale Lille, UMR 9189 - CRIStAL, Stéphane Ducasse Inria; University of Lille; CNRS; Centrale Lille; CRIStAL, Guillermo Polito Inria, Cristal, UMR 9189, Université de Lille, Pablo Tesone Univ. Lille, Inria, CNRS, Centrale Lille, UMR 9189 CRIStAL, Pharo Consortium Link to publication DOI | ||
11:30 30mTalk | Live Objects All The Way Down: Removing the Barriers between Applications and Virtual MachinesVol. 8 Research Papers Javier Pimás Universidad de Buenos Aires, Stefan Marr University of Kent, Diego Garbervetsky University of Buenos Aires and CONICET, Argentina Link to publication DOI |