Hi all,
I'm currently doing a PhD under the supervision of Stephane Ducasse and
Oscar Nierstrasz at the university of Bern, Switzerland. My main
research interests are in the context of Integrated Development
Environments (IDEs). I'm planning to work on the Squeak IDE to see how
the IDE of a dynamic object-oriented programming language can be
improved and extended.
Especially, I want to experiment with different metaphors to browse and
navigate source code, with new metaphors to present static (i.e.,
classes, methods, source code) as well as dynamic aspects (i.e.,
objects, relationships between objects, etc.) of a program in the same
IDE, with new ways to modify and edit source code, etc.
I believe that we can do more in a better way these days than what we
have in the current IDE in Smalltalk or in Java. I believe that the IDE
of the future can help the programmer to program more efficiently and
with less errors by giving him more insights into the program being
developed or by providing him with better tools and guides during his
daily work. I believe that what we have now as IDEs are far away from
what is possible to have and even far away from what we actually need to
be effective and efficient in our daily work. This is a bit sad for
Smalltalk, because a long time ago it had the best IDE, but now Eclipse
is getting better and better while the IDE of Smalltalk / Squeak stays
more or less the same. During my PhD I want to see how we can get
something better out of the current Squeak IDE.
I write this message out of two reasons: First, I would like to know if
you have ideas for things that are missing in the current DIE of Squeak,
"things", tools, metaphors, ideas that you would like to see
implemented. What are your ideas of how an IDE could help you to work
more efficiently in your daily work? Where is the current IDE in your
way, where is it not good enough, what could be better? What do you
miss, what do you need to get a better IDE?
Second, I would also like to do kind of empirical studies in the future
to somehow validate the effectiveness and efficiency of new approaches
for an IDE, hence I need subjects performing some experiments in these
future IDEs and I also need data about how you use your IDE (e.g., how
you browse source code, how and where you write source code, with which
tools, etc.). Will you be willing to provide me with these data recorded
by some non-invasive recordings tools you can simply load in your image
and which will then save the recorded data to a file which you would
then send to me? Are you also willing to perform some experiments in new
IDEs, e.g. trying and playing with them, use them for a project of
yours, etc.?
For me it is important to know if I can motivate enough people to do a
serious empirical study. Without that, I would have a hard time to
"prove" that a new approach to e.g. navigate source code is indeed
useful and promising, because this is very much dependent on personal
feelings and impressions. Only a broader study can hence "prove" the
general usefulness (or uselessness) of such a new approach or metaphor.
Thanks for your help.
Kind regards,
David