My long term interest is in the development of usable languages. Specifically, I am interested in languages that support parallelism in contexts that must deal with the world in real-time or nearly so: robotics, embedded systems, and the like.
Achieving this will take a lifetime.
merging lines of inquiry
There are two areas of inquiry that I believe must come together to answer this large question. I collaborate with colleagues around the world on both of these research directions.
[Computer Science Education Research]
To get there, we need to understand how people learn and use programming languages. This crosses the study of programming languages with educational and psychological research methods.
[Parallel Languages for Embedded Control]
In addition to understanding my users, we must design, implement, and instrument for study linguistic tools that people can use to develop embedded control systems. These tools should be informed and evaluated through techniques developed above.
While there are many paths to addressing questions regarding linguistic usability, this particular combination reflects my own background and interests.
