university of british columbia software practices lab task-focused programming with mylar gail c....

University of British Columbia

Software Practices Lab

Task-focused programming

with Mylar

Gail C. Murphy

Joint work with Mik Kersten

This talk describes:

• the problem of information overload for

programmers

• how Mylar alleviates this overload and how Mylar

works

• how Mylar went from a research project to a tool

used by thousands

NOTE: contains animations, best viewed as slideshow

© Copyright 2007, M. Kersten and G. Murphy. All rights reserved. 2

Information overload

Hard to see the forest through the trees

Repetitive scrolling, searching, navigating


Mylarsee only what you’re working on

Aluminized film used to avoid blindness when staring at an eclipse

Task Focused UI to avoid information blindness when staring at Eclipse


Mylar: Key concepts and ideas

• Task– user-defined unit of work (e.g., bug report)– support use of episodic memory

• Task context– subset of information relevant to a task– weights information according to frequency and

recency of access

• Tasks and task contexts:– support focusing a UI on a task– ease task recall (and multi-tasking)– automating parts of the UI


Demo 1: Tasks

• Without Mylar– must work with various web UIs to manage

bugs/issues/tasks

• With Mylar– task management is integrated– similar to source repositories– get persistence, offline editing, notifications


Tasks

• Connectors– similar to source repositories– support Bugzilla JIRA and Trac

• Tasks– local– web linked– repository queries– authoring, offline editing

• One integrated task list– personalized notes, reminders– archive, filters, notifications


Demo 2: Task context

• Without Mylar– manually manage context– use working sets, filters

• With Mylar– indicate the task on which you

are working– programming activity forms

context for that task– context becomes explicit in UI


Task context

• Creation– Mylar monitors your interaction– builds a degree-of-interest model– what you touch is in your context

• Multi-tasking – stored, easy to recall

• Supports a focused UI– views: filtering, decoration– editors: folding, content assist– context switching, editor

management


Demo 3: Integration

• Sharing context– attaching and retrieving

context

• Focusing the task list– scheduling, planning,

progress


Demo 3: Integration

• Sharing context– attaching and retrieving

context

• Focusing the task list– scheduling, planning,

progress

C:\Program Files\TechSmith\Camtasia Studio 3\CamPlay.exe /f /e c:\user\gail\talks\TaskFocusedProgrammingWithMylar\Demo3-Integration\Demo3-Integration.avi


There’s more…

• Automation– testing context via Active

Test Suite

• Context views– Active Type Hierarchy,

Active Search

• Everything is linked– tasks to context to

resources


Interaction historyInteractionEvent streamOrigin, handle, type, date

Context (Core)Degree-of-interest graph

Display (UI)– focus views, editors – drive search– support change management– etc.

Mylar’s context model

interest


Projecting interest onto IDE views

Tree filtered

by DOI

Editor folding

based on DOI

Ranking based

on DOI


Extensible frameworks


Mylar: Research to usable Tool• Initial seeds of idea come from our experience with tools for

helping programmers

• 03/04 2004: Brainstorming and project Mik did for visualization course led to


Mylar: Research to usable tool…

• 08 2004: Mylar 0.1 (no tasks, one context)– Field study of 6 IBM developers

• 03 2005: Mylar 0.2 presented at EclipseCon– 100 developers signed up for preview

• 03-10 2005: Field study of Mylar 0.3– statistical evidence Mylar improves programmer

productivity

• 11 2005: Mylar 0.4, first public release

• 12 2006: Mylar 1.0– 1826 bug reports resolved; 200 through community

contributions– >14,000 downloads in Jan 2007


Task-focused programming with Mylar

• Reduces information overload one task at a time

• www.eclipse.org/mylar– Committers

• Mik Kersten (project lead), Rob Elves, Steffen Pingel, Ian Bull, Gail Murphy

– Contributors• Eugene Kuleshov, Jeff Pound, Brock Janiczak, Willian

Mitsuda, Nathan Hapke, Raphael Ackermann, Gunnar Wagenknecht, Shawn Minto, Ken Sueda, Wesley Coelho, Leah Findlater

• Funding provided by IBM and NSERC

http://www.eclipse.org/mylar

university of british columbia software practices lab task-focused programming with mylar gail c....

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