Fri 25 Oct 2024 13:50 - 14:15 at Pacific - Onward! Papers

In exploratory programming, programmers often face a semantic gap between their high-level understanding and the low-level interfaces available for interacting with objects in a system. That is, technical object structure and behavior need to be interpreted as abstract domain concepts, which then increases cognitive load and thus impedes exploration progress. We propose semantic object interfaces that bridge this gap by enabling contextual, natural-language conversations with objects. Our approach leverages an exploratory programming agent powered by a large language model (LLM) to translate natural-language questions into low-level experiments and provide high-level answers. We describe a framework for integrating semantic object interfaces into existing exploratory programming systems, including a prototype implementation in Squeak/Smalltalk using GPT-4o. We showcase the potential of semantic object interfaces through case studies and discuss their feasibility, limitations, and impact on the programming experience. While challenges remain, our approach promises to reduce mental effort and empower programmers to explore and understand systems at a higher level of abstraction for a better programming experience.

Fri 25 Oct

Displayed time zone: Pacific Time (US & Canada) change

13:50 - 15:30
Onward! PapersOnward! Papers at Pacific
13:50
25m
Talk
Talking to Objects in Natural Language: Toward Semantic Tools for Exploratory ProgrammingRemote
Onward! Papers
Christoph Thiede Hasso Plattner Institute, University of Potsdam, Germany, Marcel Taeumel University of Potsdam; Hasso Plattner Institute, Lukas Böhme Hasso Plattner Institute, University of Potsdam, Potsdam, Germany, Robert Hirschfeld Hasso Plattner Institute; University of Potsdam
DOI Media Attached File Attached
14:25
25m
Talk
Active DSU: Dynamic Software Updates for Active Functions
Onward! Papers
Filip Strömbäck Linköping University, Daniel Varro Linköping University / McGill University
DOI
15:00
25m
Talk
Source-level debugging of compiler-optimised code: ill-posed, but not impossible
Onward! Papers
Stephen Kell King's College London, J. Ryan Stinnett King's College London
DOI