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wcrichton's profile
Will Crichton
Will Crichton
Will Crichton
@wcrichton

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Will Crichton

@wcrichton

Articulating the ineffable. Programming language theory 🤝 cognitive psychology. PhD @Stanford

he/him
willcrichton.net
Joined September 2011

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    1. Shalabh‏ @chatur_shalabh Jan 19

      Shalabh Retweeted Will Crichton

      A great analysis of the mental work while reading programs and good suggestions such as visualizing variable context. I'd also add: get the computer to do the tracing for you - let me feed in execution scenarios and have the system annotate or condense the program based on that.https://twitter.com/wcrichton/status/1351644389475553288 …

      Shalabh added,

      Will Crichton @wcrichton
      Excited to announce my debut PL/HCI paper appearing at CHI'21: "The Role of Working Memory in Program Tracing". Ever found it hard to remember stuff while you read a program? That's working memory! Check out our experiments exploring this phenomenon. https://arxiv.org/abs/2101.06305  pic.twitter.com/CEZ7VBrSm6
      Show this thread
      1 reply 1 retweet 9 likes
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    2. Shalabh‏ @chatur_shalabh Jan 19

      Eg. I want to - say "what if the param `x` in f(x) is Int, < 42" and see the view grey out code that wont run, assign other known values (eg. some y<10), etc. - ask "what's the relation between a and b" and see a condensed expression (b=a+f(c)-d), with relevant lines highlighted.

      1 reply 0 retweets 4 likes
      Show this thread
    3. Shalabh‏ @chatur_shalabh Jan 19

      Shalabh Retweeted Shalabh

      This should also backflow, eg. I say "f() returns True" and it shows me the range on inputs, intermediates to f() that lead to that result. Finally I want to attach such examples that travel with the code. tl;dr: queryable, explainable programming:https://twitter.com/chatur_shalabh/status/1298381340753055744 …

      Shalabh added,

      Shalabh @chatur_shalabh
      Picking out one perspective here that deserves way, way more love in the programming world than it currently gets. "I am mentally interpreting the code when there is a computer sitting right in front of me. This is absurd." pic.twitter.com/Y15C7RMDfd
      Show this thread
      1 reply 0 retweets 4 likes
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    4. Will Crichton‏ @wcrichton Jan 19
      Replying to @chatur_shalabh

      Agreed that such a tool should exist! I've been prototyping something like this using function inlining and other source-to-source compiler optimizations. https://github.com/willcrichton/inliner …pic.twitter.com/jTzTpjI1g8

      1 reply 1 retweet 2 likes
    5. Will Crichton‏ @wcrichton Jan 19
      Replying to @wcrichton @chatur_shalabh

      But I think there's important limitations to "let the computer trace for you". Sometimes you want to trace symbolically to answer questions like "will this pointer ever be null when it's derefed?"

      1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes
      Will Crichton‏ @wcrichton Jan 19
      Replying to @wcrichton @chatur_shalabh

      And sometimes you want to trace in terms of a partially specified piece of data. Eg "if I had a database with 10 rows, would what would this function do?" And there's often more overhead to mocking a test that actually does this than mentally imagining it.

      4:14 PM - 19 Jan 2021
      1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes
        1. New conversation
        2. Shalabh‏ @chatur_shalabh Jan 19
          Replying to @wcrichton

          Nice looking prototype. Seems harder to retrofit this idea on existing languages. To work well perhaps the language and environment would have to be redesigned with this in mind. I imagine a system designed for abstract interpretation for values, types and "predicated types".

          2 replies 0 retweets 1 like
        3. Shalabh‏ @chatur_shalabh Jan 19
          Replying to @chatur_shalabh @wcrichton

          (aka refinement types?) Agree the cost of specifying the scenario needs to be very little. I imagine the abstract interpreter "fills in the blanks" lazily with values or types, on demand, and the UI allows you to further refine them (instead of specifying a complete testmock)

          1 reply 0 retweets 1 like
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