An Exploratory Study on the Usage of Quantum Programming Languages

Tese de mestrado, Engenharia Informática, 2022, Universidade de Lisboa, Faculdade de CiênciasAs in the classical realm, the usage of quantum programming languages in quantum computing allows one to instruct a quantum computer to perform certain tasks. Although several imperative, declarative, and multi-paradigm quantum programming languages with different features and goals have been developed in the last 25 years, no study has been conducted on who, how, and what for does one use a quantum programming language. In this thesis, we first identified and described several quantum programming languages and then surveyed 251 quantum practitioners to answer several questions related to the usage of quantum programming languages. Further, an analysis of the results obtained is presented and shows that most of the quantum practitioners use the languages for research and that Qiskit (Python) is the most used one. Finally, we make recommendations for further development of quantum programming languages, such as building on top of a classical programming language, running in real quantum computers, supporting language documentation, and consulting developers’ needs

Lisp, Jazz, Aikido -- Three Expressions of a Single Essence

The relation between Science (what we can explain) and Art (what we can't) has long been acknowledged and while every science contains an artistic part, every art form also needs a bit of science. Among all scientific disciplines, programming holds a special place for two reasons. First, the artistic part is not only undeniable but also essential. Second, and much like in a purely artistic discipline, the act of programming is driven partly by the notion of aesthetics: the pleasure we have in creating beautiful things. Even though the importance of aesthetics in the act of programming is now unquestioned, more could still be written on the subject. The field called "psychology of programming" focuses on the cognitive aspects of the activity, with the goal of improving the productivity of programmers. While many scientists have emphasized their concern for aesthetics and the impact it has on their activity, few computer scientists have actually written about their thought process while programming. What makes us like or dislike such and such language or paradigm? Why do we shape our programs the way we do? By answering these questions from the angle of aesthetics, we may be able to shed some new light on the art of programming. Starting from the assumption that aesthetics is an inherently transversal dimension, it should be possible for every programmer to find the same aesthetic driving force in every creative activity they undertake, not just programming, and in doing so, get deeper insight on why and how they do things the way they do. On the other hand, because our aesthetic sensitivities are so personal, all we can really do is relate our own experiences and share it with others, in the hope that it will inspire them to do the same. My personal life has been revolving around three major creative activities, of equal importance: programming in Lisp, playing Jazz music, and practicing Aikido. But why so many of them, why so different ones, and why these specifically? By introspecting my personal aesthetic sensitivities, I eventually realized that my tastes in the scientific, artistic, and physical domains are all motivated by the same driving forces, hence unifying Lisp, Jazz, and Aikido as three expressions of a single essence, not so different after all. Lisp, Jazz, and Aikido are governed by a limited set of rules which remain simple and unobtrusive. Conforming to them is a pleasure. Because Lisp, Jazz, and Aikido are inherently introspective disciplines, they also invite you to transgress the rules in order to find your own. Breaking the rules is fun. Finally, if Lisp, Jazz, and Aikido unify so many paradigms, styles, or techniques, it is not by mere accumulation but because they live at the meta-level and let you reinvent them. Working at the meta-level is an enlightening experience. Understand your aesthetic sensitivities and you may gain considerable insight on your own psychology of programming. Mine is perhaps common to most lispers. Perhaps also common to other programming communities, but that, is for the reader to decide..

Does choice of programming language affect student understanding of programming concepts in a first year engineering course?

Most undergraduate engineering curricula include computer programming to some degree,introducing a structured language such as C, or a computational system such as MATLAB, or both. Many of these curricula include programming in first year engineering courses, integrating the solution of simple engineering problems with an introduction to programming concepts. In line with this practice, Roger Williams University has included an introduction to programming as a part of the first year engineering curriculum for many years. However, recent industry and pedagogical trends have motivated the switch from a structured language (VBA) to a computational system (MATLAB). As a part of the pilot run of this change,the course instructors felt that it would be worthwhile to verify that changing the programming language did not negatively affect students’ ability to understand key programming concepts. In particular it was appropriate to explore students’ ability to translate word problems into computer programs containing inputs, decision statements, computational processes, and outputs. To test the hypothesis that programming language does not affect students’ ability to understand programming concepts, students from consecutive years were given the same homework assignment, with the first cohort using VBA and the second using MATLAB to solve the assignment. A rubric was developed which allowed the investigators to rate assignments independent of programming language. Results from this study indicate that there is not a significant impact of the change in programming language. These results suggest that the choice of programming language likely does not matter for student understanding of programming concepts. Course instructors should feel free to select programming language based on other factors, such as market demand, cost, or the availability of pedagogical resources

Block-Based Development of Mobile Learning Experiences for the Internet of Things

The Internet of Things enables experts of given domains to create smart user experiences for interacting with the environment. However, development of such experiences requires strong programming skills, which are challenging to develop for non-technical users. This paper presents several extensions to the block-based programming language used in App Inventor to make the creation of mobile apps for smart learning experiences less challenging. Such apps are used to process and graphically represent data streams from sensors by applying map-reduce operations. A workshop with students without previous experience with Internet of Things (IoT) and mobile app programming was conducted to evaluate the propositions. As a result, students were able to create small IoT apps that ingest, process and visually represent data in a simpler form as using App Inventor's standard features. Besides, an experimental study was carried out in a mobile app development course with academics of diverse disciplines. Results showed it was faster and easier for novice programmers to develop the proposed app using new stream processing blocks.Spanish National Research Agency (AEI) - ERDF fund

The role of concurrency in an evolutionary view of programming abstractions

In this paper we examine how concurrency has been embodied in mainstream programming languages. In particular, we rely on the evolutionary talking borrowed from biology to discuss major historical landmarks and crucial concepts that shaped the development of programming languages. We examine the general development process, occasionally deepening into some language, trying to uncover evolutionary lineages related to specific programming traits. We mainly focus on concurrency, discussing the different abstraction levels involved in present-day concurrent programming and emphasizing the fact that they correspond to different levels of explanation. We then comment on the role of theoretical research on the quest for suitable programming abstractions, recalling the importance of changing the working framework and the way of looking every so often. This paper is not meant to be a survey of modern mainstream programming languages: it would be very incomplete in that sense. It aims instead at pointing out a number of remarks and connect them under an evolutionary perspective, in order to grasp a unifying, but not simplistic, view of the programming languages development process

Links between the personalities, styles and performance in computer programming

There are repetitive patterns in strategies of manipulating source code. For example, modifying source code before acquiring knowledge of how a code works is a depth-first style and reading and understanding before modifying source code is a breadth-first style. To the extent we know there is no study on the influence of personality on them. The objective of this study is to understand the influence of personality on programming styles. We did a correlational study with 65 programmers at the University of Stuttgart. Academic achievement, programming experience, attitude towards programming and five personality factors were measured via self-assessed survey. The programming styles were asked in the survey or mined from the software repositories. Performance in programming was composed of bug-proneness of programmers which was mined from software repositories, the grades they got in a software project course and their estimate of their own programming ability. We did statistical analysis and found that Openness to Experience has a positive association with breadth-first style and Conscientiousness has a positive association with depth-first style. We also found that in addition to having more programming experience and better academic achievement, the styles of working depth-first and saving coarse-grained revisions improve performance in programming.Comment: 27 pages, 6 figure

Logic Programming Applications: What Are the Abstractions and Implementations?

This article presents an overview of applications of logic programming, classifying them based on the abstractions and implementations of logic languages that support the applications. The three key abstractions are join, recursion, and constraint. Their essential implementations are for-loops, fixed points, and backtracking, respectively. The corresponding kinds of applications are database queries, inductive analysis, and combinatorial search, respectively. We also discuss language extensions and programming paradigms, summarize example application problems by application areas, and touch on example systems that support variants of the abstractions with different implementations