The fourth workshop on end-user software engineering

In this paper,I first review the seminal work by Thomas Kuhn — The Structure of Scientific Revolutions — and elaborate my view on paradigm shifts in software engineering research and practice as it turns 50 years old in 2018. I then examine major undertakings of the computing profession since early days of modern computing, especially those done by the software engineering community as a whole. I also enumerate anomalies and crises that occurred at various stages, and the attempts to provide solutions by the software engineering professionals in the past five decades. After providing such a background, I direct readers attention toward emerging anomalies in software engineering, at a severity level that is causing another software engineering crisis, and suggest a set of criteria for feasible solutions. The main theme of this paper is to advocate that situation analytics, equipped with necessary definitions of essential concepts including situation and intention as parts of a new computational framework, can serve as the foundation for a new software engineering paradigm named the Situation-Centric Paradigm. In this framework, situation is considered a new abstraction for computing and is clearly differentiated from the widely accepted existing abstractions, namely function and object. I argue that the software engineering professionals will inevitably move into this new paradigm, willingly or unwillingly, to empower Human-Embedded Computing (HEC) and End-User Embedded Computing (EUEC), much more than what they have done with traditional human-centered or user-centric computing altogether. In the end, I speculate that an ultimate agile method may be on the rise, and challenge readers to contemplate “what if" hundreds of thousands “end-user developers" emerge into the scene where the boundaries between end users and developers become much more blurred.

End-user software engineering (EUSE) is a research area that aims to invent new kinds of technologies that collaborate with end users to improve the quality of their software. The practice that EUSE research aims to support is end users using new tools and methods to improve the quality of the software that they and other end users have created. There is a need for this outcome because research shows both that the number of end users creating their own software greatly exceeds the number of professional software developers, and that the software they create is riddled with errors. In this paper, we describe the present state of EUSE, and challenges in moving forward toward a bright future. We show how the future of EUSE may become over-siloed, restricting future researchers' vision of what can be achieved. We then show that focusing on the in-the-moment intents of end-user developers can be used to derive a number of promising directions forward for EUSE researchers, and how theories can help us further de-silo future EUSE research. Finally, we discuss how overcoming challenges for the future of end-user software engineering may also bring direct benefits to the future of "classic" software engineering.

Context: In the last years, the Grey Literature (GL) had a notable increase in interest in diverse areas of knowledge. In Software Engineering (SE), with the advance of social media, the SE practitioners are heavy consumers of GL, opposite to traditional research papers, such as the Systematic Literature Review (SLR). Problem: Despite the increase of numbers of SLRs, some researchers claim the lack of connection to the practice of SE, due to the lack of evidence derived from SE practitioners. Goal: Introduce methods and techniques to support a Grey Literature Review (GLR) in SE, aiming to approximate the literature review to the practice of SE. Method: First, we will investigate how secondary studies use GL; Second, we will employ a survey with researchers of SLRs and SE practitioners; Third, we will analyze the use of GL according to the context; Fourth, we will review the GL source in SE; Finally, we will propose a guideline to help SE researchers and practitioners to conduct the GLR. Preliminary findings: We have initiated the tertiary study conducting the manual (4,875 studies) and automatic (6,279 studies) searches. We eliminated those that were not an article, and also those were not written in English, remaining 8,019 potential studies. Currently, we are applying the inclusion and exclusion criteria.

Today, software is being co-designed, co-developed, co-maintained and customized by professionals from a wide range of other disciplines and end users from varied and different backgrounds in addition to software engineers. While there is extensive research on facilitating and supporting end users to write better software, there is sparse research on better ways of educating them with software engineering (SE) knowledge. On the other hand, learning domain has recognized the need for adaptive and personalized learning (APL) and developed numerous approaches, methods and tools to address that need. The main purpose of this paper is firstly to expose some challenges of teaching SE to end users with an aim of understanding learning needs of end users. We then present a brief overview of APL domain and an ontology based framework for integrating APL with software engineering education (SEE). We then discuss a brief example of end users from adult literacy followed by some future directions towards delivering personalized SEE.

Clean room software engineering is a formal software development method that can strictly engineer software development and eliminate defects before they can cause serious harm. The clean room software engineering model has its own advantages and disadvantages in use. To use it in traditional software engineering, it is necessary to clarify the relationship between it and traditional software engineering methods and practices. Based on the technology and principles of the clean room software process, this paper gets the advantages and disadvantages of the clean room. Corresponding the traditional method-based software process to the key technology of the clean room, making the traditional management-based software engineering method and the tailored clean room compatible, and the software engineering practice of the clean room software process is compared with the traditional software engineering practice. To discuss the clean room and traditional software engineering, in order to expand the use of clean room methods, improve the clean room software process, and improve the quality of software.

The goal of the SEEUP 2009 workshop is to discuss end-user programming with a specific focus on the software engineering that is required to make it a more disciplined process, while still hiding the complexities of greater discipline from the end user. The main topic is the understanding of the problems and needs of the real end users of end-user programming and a discussion of the software engineering and supporting technology that would have to be in place to address these problems and needs.

In this paper we propose a novel conceptual framework for the design and continuous evolution of ambient intelligence environments. This framework is structured along three layers - physical, inference and user layer - sharing an information space of events, conditions and actions. In particular, an end-user development approach is advocated for the user layer to support rule design and development. At this stage of the research agenda, we are investigating which could be the most suitable interaction style for rule design: indeed, it should be compatible with the underlying distributed inference layer and easy to use by a community of end users (e.g. a family). To this aim, this paper presents a user study that explores end-user development tasks for a smart home and compares two well-known systems in supporting end users in these activities. The results of the study have provided some indications for the further implementation of our framework.

There has been little research on end-user program development beyond the activity of programming. Devising ways to address additional activities related to end-user program development may be critical, however, because research shows that a large proportion of the programs written by end users contain faults. Toward this end, we have been working on ways to provide formal software engineering methodologies to end-user programmers. This paper describes an approach we have developed for supporting assertions in end-user software, focusing on the spreadsheet paradigm. We also report the results of a controlled experiment, with 59 end-user subjects, to investigate the usefulness of this approach. Our results show that the end users were able to use the assertions to reason about their spreadsheets, and that doing so was tied to both greater correctness and greater efficiency.

Research in end-user programming has seen many techniques aimed at making it easier for ordinary users to program. However, empirical studies continue to report barriers end users face. In my work, I propose an Idea Garden approach to help end users overcome barriers. Rooted in the Minimalist Learning Theory and theories in problem-solving and creativity, the Idea Garden aims to facilitate end-user programmers to generate and work with their own ideas. Expected benefits of this work include both a theory-based understanding of barriers and the Idea Garden approach itself, which is intended to be generalizable across different end-user programming environments.

Visual programming approaches are limited in their usefulness if they do not include a profile of their users that defines exactly who is attempting to solve what kind of problems using which tools and why. Without such a definition, visual programming approaches can end up as solutions in search of problems. Reconceptualizing-programming environments as layered behaviour processors in the context of creating SimCity/sup TM/ like interactive simulations-makes end user programming more feasible. The layered approach serves the programming needs for a range of users, including casual computer end users and professional programmers. The extension of the Agentsheets system with the Ristretto/sup TM/ agent to Java bytecode compiler is used to illustrate how a behaviour processor enables end users to create their own Java applets that can be embedded into Web pages.

We welcome you to the Twenty-Eighth International Conference on Software Engineering and Shanghai, China. This is the first instance of the ICSE conference series to be held in China, and it is an exciting time and place for ICSE 2006. The conference brings researchers, educators, practitioners and students together to present, exchange ideas and engage in discussions about the recent and exciting innovations and research in software engineering. Exciting sessions on practical experience, educational issues, and doctoral and new faculty symposia have been organized. The conference also includes a wide variety of tutorial, workshops and demonstration offerings. Finally, since research and markets in our host country China are continuously growing, ICSE includes a separate Far East Track for discussions on the contributions and challenges of our Chinese colleagues. We trust that this mix will provide interesting and stimulating offerings to all members of our growing community. The technical program committee is pleased to present this conference proceeding that contains the research papers of the technical program for ICSE 2006. The technical program for this conference focuses on new and innovative software engineering contributions in theory, formal methods, system building and empirical studies. The papers represent an alluring array of topics, including software design, architecture, reuse, testing, analysis, processes and formal methods. Because of the growing number of paper submission and the resulting large program committees in the past, we instituted a new two-phase reviewing process this year. Our program committee had 36 members. In the first phase, each submitted paper was reviewed by 3 reviewers: 2 from the program committee and an external reviewer from the software engineering community. We had 265 external reviewers who contributed 370 reviews for this phase. Those papers receiving the best reviews were considered in the second phase. A total of 99 papers entered the second phase. Each of these papers was reviewed by another program committee member. Thus, each accepted paper had a total of 4 reviews (3 reviews from pc members and 1 review from an external reviewer). Each rejected paper had at least 3 reviews. The pc members reviewed 24-25 papers in the two phases, a reasonable number. We feel that this system worked very well. The program committee met for two days in December, 2005 in Frankfurt, Germany. By the end of the meeting, a consensus emerged for the 36 papers in this proceedings (9% of the total submissions). There were many high quality submissions that could not be accommodated in the program; hopefully a revised version will be published elsewhere. In addition to the papers, we organized four invited sessions. One invited session focuses on empirical studies, an increasingly important component of software engineering research and practice. We also have an invited panel that addresses the value and practice of formal methods. Since software engineering techniques are growing in importance in challenging safety critical domains, we included two invited sessions: one on software engineering for automotive engineering and the other on software engineering for assisted living. We are very pleased that a notably diverse and outstanding group of three leaders of the software engineering community have agreed to present keynote speeches. The opening day keynote will be presented by Prof. Yang Fuqing, from Peking University, a woman who has been at the very forefront of the software engineering communities of research and practice in China for decades. Her perspectives on the past and future of software engineering in China will be complemented by a keynote on similar themes presented on the second day. This second keynote will be delivered by Prof. Barry Boehm, from the University of Southern California, USA. His talk will review the history of software engineering research and practice in the West over the past decades, and project it forward into the 21st century. Finally, the keynote speaker on the third day, Mr. Reinhold Achatz, from Siemens Corp., will present a complementary view of software engineering research and practice, as viewed from the perspective of one of the great multinational corporations, based in Europe. We are truly excited at the prospect that these three keynotes will provide a searching multidimensional view of our community at this time of historic convergence of communities. The continued success and high quality of the ICSE conference series would not be possible without the help and support of the software engineering community. First, we would like to gratefully acknowledge and thank all of the authors who submitted papers. We especially thank the program committee members for their efforts and commitments in reviewing the papers and securing reviews from external reviewers. They put in an extraordinary amount of their time to provide thoughtful and knowledgeable reviews. The exceptionally strong technical program represented by the papers in this proceeding could not be possible without their efforts.

The Software Engineering Institute (SEI) is a federally funded research and development center situated as a college‐level unit at Carnegie Mellon University with facilities in Pittsburgh, PA and Arlington, VA. The SEI was created in 1984 by the U.S. Department of Defense to mature and transition new technology to industry so that the government could acquire software‐intensive systems from a broader, more capable contractor base. The SEI works to transform software engineering from an ad‐hoc, labor‐intensive activity to a managed, technology‐supported engineering discipline. The SEI's objectives are to accelerate the introduction and widespread use of high‐payoff software engineering practices and technology by identifying, evaluating, and maturing promising or underused technology and practices; maintain a long‐term competency in software engineering and technology transition; enable government and industry organizations to make measured improvements in their software engineering practices by working with them directly; and foster the adoption and sustained use of standards of excellence for software engineering practice. The institute explores promising solutions to potentially significant problems, selects the best candidate solutions, and works on them to determine their value. In some cases, the SEI works to overcome the limitations that prevent a solution from being of general use in the software community. Finally, the SEI moves mature solutions of proven value into widespread use; examples include the Capability Maturity Model® for Software (SW‐CMM®), and a model curriculum for a master's degree program in software engineering that has been adopted by universties across the country. SEI activities are grouped into two principal areas: software engineering management practices and software engineering technical practices.

Semiotic engineering principles for evaluating end-user programming environments

Fault patterns are code idioms that may constitute faults. Software engineers have various program analysis techniques and tools to assist them in the detection of such patterns, resulting in increased software quality. End user programmers, however, often lack such support. In this paper we take a first step to address this limitation in the context of Matlab. First, we adapt fault patterns commonly used in other programming languages to Matlab. Second, we present a tool to detect such patterns in fifteen popular Matlab programs. Our results reveal that these simple and quickly identifiable patterns are commonly found in Matlab programs developed by end users and shared across the large Matlab community of end user programmers.

Although there have been many advances in end-user programming environments, recent empirical studies report that programming still remains difficult for end users. We hypothesize that one reason may be lack of effective support for helping end-user programmers problem-solve their own way around barriers they encounter. Therefore, in this paper, we describe the Idea Garden, a concept designed to help end-user programmers generate new ideas and problem-solve when they run into barriers. The Idea Garden has its roots in Minimalist Learning Theory and problem-solving theories. Our proof-of-concept prototype of the Idea Garden concept in the CoScripter end-user programming environment currently targets three barriers reported in end-user programming literature. It does so using an integrated, just-in-time combination of scaffolding for problem-solving strategies, for design patterns, and for programming concepts. Our empirical results showed that this approach helped enduser programmers overcome all three types of barriers our prototype targeted.