The Prospects for Programming-Experience Design: On the Beauty of Language

Gary Miller
University of Technology, Sydney

This research takes a cognition-centric approach to programming languages
design, so that accessible programming languages can evolve.  It promotes the
three following directions of research. 1. The construction of a theory of the
beauty of language, to be used to guide language design. 2. Approaching
programming language design using the principles of evolution. 3. Engaging in
empirical research to validate these theories and feed this back into the
language design. The primary aim of this research is to show that a powerful
and accessible form of computation can be created.

From a programming language design perspective, this research advocates: 1.
base concepts in the spreadsheet paradigm are the starting point for
developing a language 2.  capturing of design patterns (used by expert
modellers)  as language features 3. and capturing of software engineering
principles.

The significance of this research is that software is becoming more critical
in society and the need for people to be able to effectively engage with
computation is increasing. The belief to be investigated is whether we can
create a language which is both powerful and accessible at the same time
choosing components which are closer to human cognition, will aid in both the
ease of uptake and ability to utilise this more productively.