End-User/Informal
Programming
Workshop
#11 at CHI 99 in Pittsburgh,
PA USA May 17, 1999
New 6/30/1999 Workshop
Report Word-97
format (submitted for October 1999 SIGCHI Bulletin)
6/22/1999 Participants
and Position Papers
The Continuum of Programming
Professional programmers have been studied for a long time. At the
other end of the spectrum, end-user
programmers, who do some programming in addition to their other job
duties, have received attention. Yet what about the rapidly-expanding
ranks of full-time computer professionals from informal backgrounds::
-
Access and Visual Basic programmers who learned on the job;
-
self-taught Webmasters writing Javascript;
-
network administrators writing logon scripts and configuring routers;
-
experts in complex business automation tools like SAP;
-
....
This extremely diverse group of people often exhibit characteristics of
end-users, such as a concrete mindset and learning by experience; yet in
other respects they are like professional programmers. Understanding
how they think about programming and relate to others in their business
environment is both theoretically interesting, and practical in view of
their growing economic importance.
The experience of "real" professional programmers and end users is changing,
too. When they both build interfaces by checking boxes and browsing
applets in complex development environments, their roles of user and programmer
are also blended. There is a need to put together our understandings
of how these different kinds of people make use of, and think about, the
activity of programming. If you have expertise in areas such
as end-user programming, the psychology and sociology of programming, you
are invited to join us at CHI 99 to help formulate an agenda for research
into the new continuum of programming. Up to fifteen participants
will be chosen based on position papers.
HomeCallAgendaPosition
Papers OrganizersEnd-User
Programming
Last update 7/3/1999 Maintained by Howie
Goodell
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