Title: Sharing Programming Expertise

Thomas LaToza, Associate Professor of Computer Science, School of Computing, George Mason University

Abstract:

Software organizations work very hard to hire the best people. Studies have long shown that the best developers can work over 10x as fast. Why? What is the nature of the expertise that can make a developer more effective? Can this expertise be shared?

In this talk, we’ll explore several conceptualizations of the nature of software engineering expertise, examining how experienced developers comprehend code differently, how experienced software designers work with multiple representations of design, and how debugging experts formulate hypotheses. We’ll see how programming expertise can be made explicit, so that everyone can work like an expert. And we’ll examine how LLMs offer new opportunities to share and use expertise as they reshape programming workflows. We’ll conclude with a retrospective on a dev tool spinoff and the challenges bridging the gulf between research and practice.

Bio:

Thomas LaToza is an Associate Professor of Computer Science in the School of Computing at George Mason University. He leads DevX, the Developer Experience Design Lab. His work draws on empirical studies of programming practice to inform the design of new types of tools for programming, debugging, and software design. His work on microtask programming helped inspire several recent startups. His early work, in collaboration with Microsoft Research, helped lay the foundations for many of the contemporary uses of empiricism in software engineering. 

Prior to Mason, he was a postdoc in the Software Design and Collaboration Lab (SDCL) at UC Irvine, where he worked with André van der Hoek. He has a PhD in Software Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University in the department formerly known as the Institute for Software Research International, where he was Captain of the Hidden Dragons volleyball team, Executive Producer of the inaugural School of Computer Science Musical, and worked with Brad Myers and Jonathan Aldrich. He served as General Chair of the Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing, was recognized as a George Mason University Teacher of Distinction, and has received several awards for his research.