@article{shrestha_chopra_henley_parnin_2023, title={Detangler: Helping Data Scientists Explore, Understand, and Debug Data Wrangling Pipelines}, ISSN={["1943-6092"]}, DOI={10.1109/VL-HCC57772.2023.00031}, abstractNote={Data scientists spend significant time on data wrangling-a process involving data cleaning, shaping, and pre-processing. Data wrangling requires meticulous exploration and backtracking to assess data quality by applying and validating numerous data transformation chains, making it a tedious and error-prone process. In this paper, we present Detangler, an interactive tool within the RStudio IDE that helps data scientists identify and debug data quality issues and wrangling code. The design of Detangler is informed via formative interviews, and it presents data scientists with (i) insights into potential data quality issues, and (ii) always-on visual summaries of the effects of individual data transformations, enabling interactive exploration of data and wrangling code. Through a laboratory study with 18 data scientists, triangulated with telemetry data, we find that Detangler improves exploration and debugging of data smells and data wrangling code. We discuss design implications for future tools for data science programming.}, journal={2023 IEEE SYMPOSIUM ON VISUAL LANGUAGES AND HUMAN-CENTRIC COMPUTING, VL/HCC}, author={Shrestha, Nischal and Chopra, Bhavya and Henley, Austin Z. and Parnin, Chris}, year={2023}, pages={189–198} }
 @article{shrestha_botta_barik_parnin_2020, title={Here We Go Again: Why Is It Difficult for Developers to Learn Another Programming Language?}, ISSN={["0270-5257"]}, DOI={10.1145/3377811.3380352}, abstractNote={Once a programmer knows one language, they can leverage concepts and knowledge already learned, and easily pick up another programming language. But is that always the case? To understand if programmers have difficulty learning additional programming languages, we conducted an empirical study of Stack Overflow questions across 18 different programming languages. We hypothesized that previous knowledge could potentially interfere with learning a new programming language. From our inspection of 450 Stack Overflow questions, we found 276 instances of interference that occurred due to faulty assumptions originating from knowledge about a different language. To understand why these difficulties occurred, we conducted semi-structured interviews with 16 professional programmers. The interviews revealed that programmers make failed attempts to relate a new programming language with what they already know. Our findings inform design implications for technical authors, toolsmiths, and language designers, such as designing documentation and automated tools that reduce interference, anticipating uncommon language transitions during language design, and welcoming programmers not just into a language, but its entire ecosystem.}, journal={2020 ACM/IEEE 42ND INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON SOFTWARE ENGINEERING (ICSE 2020)}, author={Shrestha, Nischal and Botta, Colton and Barik, Titus and Parnin, Chris}, year={2020}, pages={691–701} }