MATLAB doesn't love me: An essay

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Abstract

Programming is everywhere, and is becoming an increasingly essential component of knowledge work outside the realms of traditional software development. Examples include data journalism, scientific computing, machine control, machine learning, financial management, and others. A key aspect of this trend is that users have to use programming tools, but typically lack programming education, let alone a computer science background. In this short paper we revisit potential assumptions and preconceptions underlying traditional programming system design, from the perspective of practicing scientists using tools like MATLAB, R, Bash, Python, C++, and others. Specifically, we aim to peel off some ingrained assumptions that have informed programming language and system design for decades. Without giving a lot of answers, we hope some of our contrarian observations may turn out to be controversial, and stimulate a meaningful discussion towards a better programmer experience in the domain of science.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationProgramming 2020 - Conference Companion of the 4th International Conference on Art, Science, and Engineering of Programming
EditorsAdemar Aguiar, Shigeru Chiba, Elisa Gonzalez Boix
PublisherICST
Pages97-101
Number of pages5
ISBN (Electronic)9781450375078
ISBN (Print)78-1-4503-7507-8
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 23-Mar-2020
Event4th International Conference on Art, Science, and Engineering of Programming, Programming 2020 - Virtual, Online, Portugal
Duration: 23-Mar-202026-Mar-2020

Publication series

NamePervasiveHealth: Pervasive Computing Technologies for Healthcare
ISSN (Print)2153-1633

Conference

Conference4th International Conference on Art, Science, and Engineering of Programming, Programming 2020
Country/TerritoryPortugal
CityVirtual, Online
Period23/03/202026/03/2020

Keywords

  • end-user programming
  • language design
  • programmer experience
  • scientific programming

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