Title: Technical Dimensions of Programming Systems Authors: Joel Jakubovic, Jonathan Edwards, and Tomas Petricek (who I think are @jdjakub, @jonathoda and @tomasp, respectively) This is still in review afaik, but it’s just too much of a gem for this community to wait until that’s done. If one of the authors has information about the latest revisions I’d love to know more! from the abstract:

Many programming systems go beyond programming languages. Programming is usually done in the context of a stateful environment, beyond just writing code, by interacting with a system through a graphical user interface. Much research effort focuses on building programming systems that are easier to use, accessible to non-experts, moldable and/or powerful, but such efforts are often disconnected. They are informal, guided by the personal vision of the authors and thus are only evaluable and comparable on the basis of individual experience using them. They fail to form a coherent body of research, since it is unclear how to build on past work. In the research world, much has been said and done that allows comparison of programming languages, yet no similar theory exists for _programming systems_; we believe that programming systems deserve a theory too.

This paper was one of the most exciting pieces of research I’ve discovered in the last year, can’t recommend it enough! Attached is a PDF of the paper (a version of it at least) and a great single-page table (explored in detail later in the paper) which should convey some of why this is such a good fit for our community.

Coincidentally just saw this paper linked here by one of the authors: http://tomasp.net/blog/2022/no-code-substrates/