The Hitchhiker's Guide to Software Languages

GPCE'10 Keynote

Status

Appeared in GPCE 2010 proceedings

Downloads and links

• Extended abstract: [.pdf].
• Slides as presented at GPCE 2010: [.pdf].
• The 101companies software corpus: [Wiki].

Author(s)

Ralf Lämmel

Acknowledgements

I gratefully acknowledge collaboration with Jean-Marie Favre (OneTree Technologies, Luxembourg) and Dragan Gasevic (Athabasca University, Canada) on the subject of this talk. I am also very grateful to Wolfgang Lohmann for his key role in the empirical work discussed in the presentation. Further, I am very grateful to Thomas Schmorleiz who helped me substantially in setting up the 101companies software corpus.

Abstract (see the download section for the extended abstract)

There is only that much space in the CS curriculum, and there are always new subjects that should be accommodated by the curriculum. For instance, in our community, we would want all graduates to leave university with a modest background in technical spaces, software languages, and meta-programming; also, with conceptually informed and reasonably timeless skills to efficiently master related programming techniques and technologies. In reality, the curricula of few CS departments meet this expectation.

In this talk, I will discuss such curricula-related expectations of our community and the suboptimal situation at CS departments---as I perceive them. More importantly, I will allude to a revision of the CS curriculum that could optimize matters and may stand a chance for mid-term adoption.

Keywords

Technical Spaces, Software Languages, Metaprogramming, X/O/R Mapping, Programming Techniques, Programming Technologies.

Bibtex entry

@inproceedings{Laemmel42,
 author = "Ralf L{\"a}mmel",
 title = "{The Hitchhiker's Guide to Software Languages}",
 booktitle = "{Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on
Generative Programming and Component Engineering (GPCE'10)}",
 publisher = ACM,
 year = 2010,
 note = "1 page"
}