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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">Andy Begel and Tom Zimmermann have just
put up results of a survey that asked developers at Microsoft what
questions they would most like software engineering researchers to
answer:
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://research.microsoft.com/apps/pubs/default.aspx?id=208800">http://research.microsoft.com/apps/pubs/default.aspx?id=208800</a>
I'm sure they'd welcome comments... :-)<br>
Cheers,<br>
Greg<br>
<br>
On 2014-05-12 9:49 PM, Jim Blandy wrote:<br>
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cite="mid:CAHgb+0k+0edTpg0PXQyVtkJuoBGHSasGHuyaqTprrcXi=KFR6g@mail.gmail.com"
type="cite">
<div dir="ltr">
<div>That's *wonderful*. Yes, that's exactly the kind of thing
I'm looking for.<br>
<br>
I wonder what the effects of experience are. For example, I
might assert that, having internalized Emacs's keyboard
commands, I am able to work more efficiently than someone who
has been using, say, Notepad for an equivalent amount of time
- and that assertion is not inconsistent with the belief that
novices do better with Notepad than with Emacs.<br>
<br>
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I'd love to see an experiment that measures the effect of a
syntax after a programmer had had a few months to get used to
it. That sounds difficult to conduct, but I can dream...<br>
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<br>
<br>
<div class="gmail_quote">On Mon, May 12, 2014 at 4:47 PM, Greg
Wilson <span dir="ltr"><<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="mailto:greg@mozillafoundation.org" target="_blank">greg@mozillafoundation.org</a>></span>
wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0
.8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000">
<div>Have you seen <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://neverworkintheory.org/2014/01/29/stefik-siebert-syntax.html"
target="_blank">http://neverworkintheory.org/2014/01/29/stefik-siebert-syntax.html</a>
?<br>
Cheers,<br>
Greg
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<div class="h5"><br>
<br>
On 2014-05-12 6:08 PM, Jim Blandy wrote:<br>
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<div>That's actually a painful question.<br>
<br>
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It's blazingly obvious that human factors have a
first-order impact on the effectiveness of a
programming language, but there isn't much hard
data on what the influences are, or how they play
out. It's much more fun (and more thesis-friendly)
to produce some theoretical result than to publish
some soft-science mushy experimental result that
struggles to establish a 95% confidence interval -
even if the latter is what programmers really
need.<br>
<br>
And then there's the fact that people rarely have
a choice of programming languages, so whatever
improvements you do find are hard to deploy.<br>
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<div class="gmail_extra"><br>
<br>
<div class="gmail_quote">On Mon, May 12, 2014 at
12:19 PM, Greg Wilson <span dir="ltr"><<a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="mailto:greg@mozillafoundation.org"
target="_blank">greg@mozillafoundation.org</a>></span>
wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0
0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc
solid;padding-left:1ex">My first thought was,
where's the data from A/B testing? :-)
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<div><br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote"
style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px
#ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"> Food for
thought.<br>
<br>
<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://medium.com/p/6f83add748c9"
target="_blank">https://medium.com/p/6f83add748c9</a><br>
<br>
</blockquote>
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