Language Workbench Challenge 2016: Call for Solutions

#############################################################

Language Workbench Challenge 2016 @ SLE: Call for Solutions

Collocated with SPLASH'16 in Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Deadline: Mon 1 Aug 2016

Notification: Mon 5 Sep 2016

Workshop: Tue 1 Nov 2016

#############################################################

Language workbenches are tools that lower the development costs of implementing new languages and their associated tools (IDEs, debuggers etc.). As well as easing the development of traditional stand-alone languages, language workbenches also make multi-paradigm and language-oriented programming environments practical. The Language Workbench Challenge (LWC) aims to bring together language workbench users and implementers, to discuss the state-of-the-art in language workbenches and explore future directions.

LWC’16 solicits solutions to 3 benchmark problems proposed in Section 6.5 of the following paper:

    Sebastian Erdweg, Tijs van der Storm, Markus Völter, Laurence Tratt, et al.

    **Evaluating and comparing language workbenches: Existing results and benchmarks for the future**,

    Computer Languages, Systems & Structures, Volume 44, Part A, December 2015, Pages 24–47.

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cl.2015.08.007

Preprint: http://homepages.cwi.nl/~storm/publications/lwc13-comlan.pdf

The benchmark problems are categorized in the following categories:

- Notation: challenges dealing with the appearance of source code, including support for tabular notation, mathematical symbols, code in prose etc.

- Evolution and reuse: challenges related to modularity, composition, language versions and migration.

- Editing: challenges exercising how the language user interacts with code.

The goal of the workshop is to demonstrate, discuss and foster improvements in tools, as well as encourage the collaboration between and learning among different teams developing different (kinds of) editors. To this end, we emphasize the implementation of the challenges, not writing about them. Submissions should be short documents (in PDF format) describing each solution using the following structure:

- Assumptions: Are there any assumptions or prerequisites relevant to the implementation of the solution?

- Implementation: What are the important building blocks for defining the solution? What does it take to implement the solution to the problem?

- Variants: Are there any interesting and insightful variants of the implementation? What small change(s) to the challenge would make a big difference in the implementation strategy or effort?

- Usability: What is the resulting user experience? Is it convenient to use? Is it similar to other kinds of notations? Does it feel ’foreign’ to experienced users of the particular editor?

- Impact: Which artifacts have to be changed to make the solution work? Are changes required to (conceptually) unrelated artifacts? How modular is the solution?

- Composability: To what degree does the solution support composition with solutions to other benchmark problems other instances of the same problem (e.g., same challenge problem, different language feature)?

- Limitations: What are the limitations of this implementation?

- Uses and Examples: Are there examples of this problem in real-world systems? Where can the reader learn more?

- Effort (best-effort): How much effort has been spent to build the solution, assuming an experienced user of the technology?

- Other Comments: Anything that does not fit within the other categories.

- Artifact: a publicly accessible URL to the source code of the submission.

The paper cited above includes two example descriptions for inspiration, Submissions should furthermore use the ACM SIGPLAN Conference Format, 10 point font, using the font family Times New Roman and numeric citation style.

The PC will review the submissions for inclusion in the workshop program, based on criteria of providing interest for discussion, conformance to the challenges, and whether the submission is on-topic (e.g., is using a language workbench). The PDFs of accepted submissions will be published on this website before the workshop.

Organization

- Meinte Boersma (Mendix)

- Eugen Schindler (Oce)

- Tijs van der Storm (CWI)

- Markus Voelter (itemis AG)

Program Committee

- Lorenzo Bettini (DISIA)

- Sebastian Erdweg (TU Delft)

- Pablo Inostroza (CWI)

- Tamás Szabó (itemis AG / TU Darmstadt)