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Michael Homer's user avatar
Michael Homer's user avatar
Michael Homer
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I am an academic programming languages researcher at Victoria University of Wellington, focusing on language features and interfaces to enable more people to access programming and programming languages.

My PhD thesis work was on both design and implementation of an educational language called Grace, and my publications since then have covered a range of languages and paradigms. I'm interested in novel interfaces and approaches to programming that aren't explored as much, and figuring out why not and where they could be helpful.

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Top posts
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46
Why do programming languages use the asterisk * for multiplication?
Sep 20, 2023
answer
34
How does one transpile valid code that corresponds to undefined behavior in the target language?
Jun 28, 2023
answer
31
How are "strong" and "weak" typing defined?
Apr 27
answer
30
Could function parameters be placed inside names?
Jul 19, 2023
question
29
How have modern language designs dealt with Unicode strings?
Jun 13, 2023
answer
27
How can the language or tooling notify the user of infinite loops?
Jul 22, 2023
answer
24
What is the use of explicitly specifying if a function is recursive or not?
Jul 28, 2023
answer
24
Studies on learnability of braces vs. indentation for code blocks for beginners?
Nov 29, 2023
answer
22
What language was the first to treat null checks as smart casts to non-nullable types?
Nov 11, 2023
answer
22
What makes a language 'beginner-friendly'?
Apr 3
Top Meta posts
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22
Should we Have a Pseudocode Standard/Guideline for Language Design Questions?
19
One year of Programming Language Design and Implementation Stack Exchange!
15
Raising the bar: this should be a community for people who work on languages in a serious capacity
14
Spam is arriving on PLDI! What do we do about it?
12
What are the pros and cons of mechanistically prefixing every question with "What are the pros and cons of"?
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376
How can I test if a variable is empty or contains only spaces?
187
Where is bash's history stored?
177
Is there a way of reading the last element of an array with bash?
164
Linux: set date through command line
91
What is the difference between the "...", '...', $'...', and $"..." quotes in the shell?