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> At least I’ve never seen properly conducted studies involving psychologists or neuroscientists upon introducing yet another new fancy feature into a programmi

> At least I’ve never seen properly conducted studies involving psychologists or neuroscientists upon introducing yet another new fancy feature into a programming language. I studied Mechanical Engineering, but did my Master Thesis on "Evaluation of MicroPython as Application Layer Programming Language on CubeSats"* - way out of my depth. I tried to find some prior work on how to chose programming languages for specific domains, and how to judge if a language is the right tool for a task - and there wasn't much. I even tried to measure how "easy" a programming language is, in a hilariously misinformed user study. There were 8 people, I was measuring the time it took them to implement small snippets in Python vs. C. I had this one dataset with weird outliers, where a person who performed really well, just took forever for some of the tasks ... later one of the participants told me he texted during the study. And although I felt really bad about my really bad study, I also felt like the avantgarde of the field^^ Anyway, if we can find someone to fund it, I'd like to see brain activity scans of programmers using different languages. We already know smartphone usage rewires our brains. I wanna see the brain of JavaScript developer compared to a Lisper, Rustacean, ... . * conference paper: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/319525786_Evaluation_of_MicroPython_as_Application_Layer_Programming_Language_on_CubeSats https://www.researchgate.net/publication/319525786_Evaluatio...

codetrotter 7y ago
> I wanna see the brain of JavaScript developer compared to a Lisper, Rustacean, ... . Makes me wonder if a person using multiple different programming languages would have a different looking scan depending on which of their preferred languages they were using. Actually that wouldn’t entirely surprise me if it did. I think I think in different ways when I program in Rust vs JS or Python at least. (All three of which I use and enjoy for different kinds of purposes.)
- FridgeSeal 7y ago
  Using Haskell definitely makes me think differently. Or at least feel like I’m thinking differently.
vanderZwan 7y ago
> I wanna see the brain of JavaScript developer compared to a Lisper, Rustacean, ... Even more fun: polyglots as they work out problems in different languages!
- turbinerneiter 7y ago
  You will probably need that and even more to figure out all the influences. It's gonna be incredibly hard to control everything. This could also be an epic vim/emacs battle.
Seanny123 7y ago
The Qorum people have been doing psychology-informed Programming Language Design for a while now. https://quorumlanguage.com/evidence.html https://quorumlanguage.com/evidence.html
- divan 7y ago
  Thanks for sharing!
- turbinerneiter 7y ago
  That would have been great input for my thesis!
  - Seanny123 7y ago
    As someone who also completed a Master's thesis, I really hope that feeling goes away at some point.
    - turbinerneiter 7y ago
      Not if liked our topic and would like to do more work like that :)

codetrotter 7y ago

> I wanna see the brain of JavaScript developer compared to a Lisper, Rustacean, ... . Makes me wonder if a person using multiple different programming languages would have a different looking scan depending on which of their preferred languages they were using. Actually that wouldn’t entirely surprise me if it did. I think I think in different ways when I program in Rust vs JS or Python at least. (All three of which I use and enjoy for different kinds of purposes.)

FridgeSeal 7y ago
Using Haskell definitely makes me think differently. Or at least feel like I’m thinking differently.

vanderZwan 7y ago

> I wanna see the brain of JavaScript developer compared to a Lisper, Rustacean, ... Even more fun: polyglots as they work out problems in different languages!

turbinerneiter 7y ago
You will probably need that and even more to figure out all the influences. It's gonna be incredibly hard to control everything. This could also be an epic vim/emacs battle.

Seanny123 7y ago

The Qorum people have been doing psychology-informed Programming Language Design for a while now. https://quorumlanguage.com/evidence.html https://quorumlanguage.com/evidence.html

divan 7y ago
Thanks for sharing!
turbinerneiter 7y ago
That would have been great input for my thesis!
- Seanny123 7y ago
  As someone who also completed a Master's thesis, I really hope that feeling goes away at some point.
  - turbinerneiter 7y ago
    Not if liked our topic and would like to do more work like that :)