Usability reports (was RE:tabs do WHAT?)

[seanb at home.com]

On 24 Jan, Tim Peters wrote:
> [seanb at home.com]
>> Out of curiosity, are there any online copies of these
>> usability studies that were so formative to pythone?  Such
>> studies might make interesting reading and some people may
>> have more trust in the results of a study they could examine
>> online.
>>
>> Failing online access, is there any public access to write-ups
>> of these studies?
> 
> Agreed it would be interesting!  I don't have any links for you -- I knew
> ABC only as a user, but read several papers that came out of the project.
> That was over a decade ago, though, and certainly not on the web; the
> specific claim about indentation is one I don't recall reading about then,
> but is one Guido has mentioned on c.l.py several times since (but he hasn't
> bothered to jump into a "whitespace thread" in years -- you'd have to search
> hard for that).
> 
> The ABC project is no longer active.  Its sponsoring institution still has
> *some* info available (http://www.cwi/nl/).  Leo Geurts, Lambert Meertens
> and Steven Pemberton were ABC's primary designers.  A quick web search on
> their names turned up this citation:
> 
>     "An Alternative Simple Language and Environment for PC's"
>     S. Pemberton, IEEE Software 4(1):56-64 (Jan 1987)
> 
> Presumably (a) that contains more info, and (b) is not available online.
> 
> Here's a snazzy quote from SP's homepage (http://www.cwi.nl/~steven/):
> 
>     We did requirements and task analysis, iterative design,
>     and user testing.  You'd almost think programming languages
>     were an interface between people and computers.
> 
> today's-generation-would-probably-find-3D-rotating-
>     metallic-braces-easier-to-grasp<wink>-ly y'rs  - tim
> 
> 
> 
	I found a number of reports available for ordering at 
http://www.cwi.nl/~steven/abc/publications.html.  Among the more
interesting items in this listing are:

Designing a Beginners' Programming Language

Leo Geurts and Lambert Meertens, 18 pages. This was the first article on B. It
clarifies some of the design objectives and describes the result of the first 
iteration in the defining process. Published in New Directions in Algorithmic 
Languages 1975, ed.S.A. Schuman, IRIA, Rocquencourt (1976). Available from CWI
 as report IW 46, price Dfl.4.00. 

Program Text and Program Structure

Lambert Meertens, 11 pages. Proposes the method of stepwise refinement as a 
means to make the structure of program development explicit in the program text. Published in Constructing Quality Software, ed. S.A. Schuman, North-Holland Publ.
Co. (1978). Available from CWI as report IW 78, price Dfl.4.00. 

	These both seem interesting and I am tempted to order them.  My
biggest stumbling block is finding out what a DFL is (sorry, clueless
American here, I think in USD).  Hazarding a guess that Dfl ==
Netherlands Guilder == NLG, I plugged4 into the Universal Currency
converter to discover that 4 NLG == $1.82256 USD.  In other words, I
would probably end up paying more for shipping than for the reports.

	I have heard many claims about Python's usability and the ease
of learning python.  While my own experience strongly concurs with
these claims, I am eager to get my hands on some concrete information
aout this.  Perhaps eventually such information would be available from
the python.org website?


--
Sean Blakey
(206)297-7123
quine = ['print "quine =",quine,"; exec(quine[0])"']; exec(quine[0])