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

© Copyright 2007, M. Kersten and G. Murphy. All rights reserved. 3 Mylar see 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

© Copyright 2007, M. Kersten and G. Murphy. All rights reserved. 4 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

© Copyright 2007, M. Kersten and G. Murphy. All rights reserved. 5 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

© Copyright 2007, M. Kersten and G. Murphy. All rights reserved. 6 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

© Copyright 2007, M. Kersten and G. Murphy. All rights reserved. 7 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

© Copyright 2007, M. Kersten and G. Murphy. All rights reserved. 8 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

© Copyright 2007, M. Kersten and G. Murphy. All rights reserved. 9 Demo 3: Integration Sharing context –attaching and retrieving context Focusing the task list –scheduling, planning, progress

© Copyright 2007, M. Kersten and G. Murphy. All rights reserved. 10 Demo 3: Integration Sharing context –attaching and retrieving context Focusing the task list –scheduling, planning, progress

© Copyright 2007, M. Kersten and G. Murphy. All rights reserved. 11 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

© Copyright 2007, M. Kersten and G. Murphy. All rights reserved. 12 Interaction history InteractionEvent stream Origin, 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

© Copyright 2007, M. Kersten and G. Murphy. All rights reserved. 13 Projecting interest onto IDE views Tree filtered by DOI Editor folding based on DOI Ranking based on DOI

© Copyright 2007, M. Kersten and G. Murphy. All rights reserved. 14 Extensible frameworks

© Copyright 2007, M. Kersten and G. Murphy. All rights reserved. 15 Mylar: Research to usable Tool Initial seeds of idea come from our experience with tools for helping programmers 03/ : Brainstorming and project Mik did for visualization course led to

© Copyright 2007, M. Kersten and G. Murphy. All rights reserved. 16 Mylar: Research to usable tool… : Mylar 0.1 (no tasks, one context) –Field study of 6 IBM developers : Mylar 0.2 presented at EclipseCon – 100 developers signed up for preview : Field study of Mylar 0.3 –statistical evidence Mylar improves programmer productivity : Mylar 0.4, first public release : Mylar 1.0 –1826 bug reports resolved; 200 through community contributions –>14,000 downloads in Jan 2007

© Copyright 2007, M. Kersten and G. Murphy. All rights reserved. 17 Task-focused programming with Mylar Reduces information overload one task at a time –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