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Colloquium Talk: Squashing Bugs and Empowering Programmers with User-Centered Programming Language Design

Abstract:

Programming languages are simultaneously formal systems and user interfaces with which programmers work. Unfortunately, programmers have a hard time writing safe software: serious bugs and security vulnerabilities are common. In many cases, however, languages with strong safety guarantees have been hard to use. In this talk, I’ll discuss user-centered design methods I developed to help language designers create languages that are easier to use. I’ll show how I created and evaluated Obsidian, a new smart contract language that uses a linear type system, and Bronze, a new garbage collector for Rust. In each case, I found that the resulting language helps programmers write software more effectively than with prior approaches.

Bio:

Michael Coblenz is a Basili Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Maryland. Michael developed the PLIERS method, which integrates user-centered methods into the design process for safe programming languages. He created Glacier, an immutability system for Java; Obsidian, a strongly-typed language for smart contracts; and Bronze, a garbage collector that improves usability of Rust. He holds a Ph.D. in computer science from Carnegie Mellon University. Previously, he was a Senior Software Engineer at Apple. His work, which is at the intersection of programming languages, software engineering, and human-computer interaction research, has been published at OOPSLA, TOPLAS, ICSE, and TOCHI.

Contact

Adwait Jog

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