An Empirical Investigation into Programming Language Syntax by Greg Wilson.
A great synopsis of Andreas Stefik and Susanna Siebert’s “An Empirical Investigation into Programming Language Syntax.” ACM Transactions on Computing Education, 13(4), Nov. 2013.
A sample to interest you in the post:
- Programming language designers needlessly make programming languages harder to learn by not doing basic usability testing. For example, “…the three most common words for looping in computer science, for, while, and foreach, were rated as the three most unintuitive choices by non-programmers.”
- C-style syntax, as used in Java and Perl, is just as hard for novices to learn as a randomly-designed syntax. Again, this pain is needless, because the syntax of other languages (such as Python and Ruby) is significantly easier.
Let me repeat part of that:
C-style syntax, as used in Java and Perl, is just as hard for novices to learn as a randomly-designed syntax.
Randomly-designed syntax?
Now, think about the latest semantic syntax or semantic query syntax you have read about.
Was it designed for users? Was there any user testing at all?
Is there a lesson here for designers of semantic syntaxes and query languages?
Yes?
I first saw this in Greg Wilson’s Software Carpentry: Lessons Learned video.