Note sull’usabilità dei linguaggi di programmazione

The mismatch between the way a programmer thinks about a solution and the way it must be expressed in the programming language makes it more difficult not only for beginners to learn how to program, but also for people to carry out their programming tasks even after they become more experienced.

John F. Pane – A Programming System for Children that is Designed for Usability

Overly complex mappings can easily compromise performance, so one of the main challenges in improving programming language usability is providing metaphors (and hence paradigms) that are appropriate for the user, allowing them to learn the behaviour of the language but also to achieve useful tasks in their problem domain.

Alan F. Blackwell and T.R.G. Green – Does Metaphor Increase Visual Language Usability?

On-the-fly programming (or live coding) is a style of programming in which the programmer/performer/composer augments and modifies the program while it is running, without stopping or restarting, in order to assert expressive, programmable control for performance, composition, and experimentation at run-time. Because of the fundamental powers of programming languages, we believe the technical and aesthetic aspects of on-the-fly programming are worth exploring.

http://on-the-fly.cs.princeton.edu/