Interfaces for programming: Rethinking program development from an HCI perspective

Dr. Michael Kölling

While modern user interface design has changed our interactions with many of our computing system in the last decade, including applications on mobile and desktop systems, the interfaces for our software development tools have changed little. Most program representation and entry is still based purely on text – a one-dimensional string of characters laid out in two dimensions on a screen – with design elements rooted in technology from many decades ago.

In this talk, we will speculate about the future of programming tools and discuss what a program entry and manipulation tool – a program editor – might look like when we take a fresh look at designing the interface.

Michael Kölling is a Professor at the School of Computing, University of Kent, in Canterbury, UK. He holds a PhD in computer science from Sydney University, and has worked in Australia, Denmark and the UK. Michael's research interests are in the areas of object-oriented systems, programming languages, software tools, computing education and HCI. He has published numerous papers on object-orientation and computing education topics and is the author and co-author of two Java textbooks. Michael is the lead developer of BlueJ and Greenfoot, two educational programming environments. He is a UK National Teaching Fellow, Fellow of the UK Higher Education Academy, Oracle Java Champion, and a Distinguished Educator of the ACM. In 2013, he received the ACM SIGCSE Award for Outstanding Contribution to Computer Science Education. Michael is a founding member of 'Computing At School', a UK organisation furthering computing teaching at school level.