6 research outputs found
Purposes, concepts, misfits, and a redesign of git
Git is a widely used version control system that is powerful but complicated. Its complexity may not be an inevitable consequence of its power but rather evidence of flaws in its design. To explore this hypothesis, we analyzed the design of Git using a theory that identifies concepts, purposes, and misfits. Some well-known difficulties with Git are described, and explained as misfits in which underlying concepts fail to meet their intended purpose. Based on this analysis, we designed a reworking of Git (called Gitless) that attempts to
remedy these flaws. To correlate misfits with issues reported by users, we
conducted a study of Stack Overflow questions. And to determine whether users experienced fewer complications using Gitless in place of Git, we conducted a small user study. Results suggest our approach can be profitable in identifying, analyzing, and fixing design problems.SUTD-MIT International Design Centre (IDC
Live & Local Schema Change: Challenge Problems
Schema change is an unsolved problem in both live programming and local-first
software. We include in schema change any change to the expected shape of data,
whether that is expressed explicitly in a database schema or type system, or
whether those expectations are implicit in the behavior of the code. Schema
changes during live programming can create a mismatch between the code and data
in the running environment. Similarly, schema changes in local-first
programming can create mismatches between data in different replicas, and
between data in a replica and the code colocated with it. In all of these
situations the problem of schema change is to migrate or translate existing
data in coordination with changes to the code.
This paper contributes a set of concrete scenarios involving schema change
that are offered as challenge problems to the live programming and local-first
communities. We hope that these problems will spur progress by providing
concrete objectives and a basis for comparing alternative solutions.Comment: To appear at LIVE Programming Workshop, October 24, 2023, ACM SIGPLAN
conference on Systems, Programming, Languages, and Applications (SPLASH)
Cascais, Portuga
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Proceedings of the 33rd Annual Workshop of the Psychology of Programming Interest Group
This is the Proceedings of the 33rd Annual Workshop of the Psychology of Programming Interest Group (PPIG). This was the first PPIG to be held physically since 2019, following the two online-only PPIGs in 2020 and 2021, both during the Covid pandemic. It was also the first PPIG conference to be designed specifically for hybrid attendance. Reflecting the theme, it was hosted by Music Computing Lab at the Open University in Milton Keynes