Block-Based Editing in a Textual World

Authors:
Tom Beckmann, Lukas Böhme, Marcel Taeumel, Robert Hirschfeld
Published:
In PAINT '25: 4th ACM SIGPLAN International Workshop on Programming Abstractions and Interactive Notations, Tools, and Environments. October 9, 2025.
Abstract:

Block-based programming environments offer unique benefits for editing or integration of visual tools that could be useful across programming environments. However, most general-purpose programming environments are designed around textual representations of programs. We explore the design of a block-based editor that integrates with existing textual environments, using the example of the Squeak/Smalltalk development environment. Through a user study, we show that users felt generally comfortable with our editor’s edit interactions when compared to textual editing. We discuss the design's difficulties and opportunities we observed during our user study and our own use to help propose block-based editor designs that integrate well with text-based environments.

BibTeX: 
@inproceedings{beckmann2025,
  title = {{Block-Based Editing in a Textual World}},
  author = {Tom Beckmann and Lukas Böhme and Marcel Taeumel and Robert Hirschfeld},
  booktitle = {PAINT '25: 4th ACM SIGPLAN International Workshop on Programming Abstractions and Interactive Notations, Tools, and Environments},
  year = 2025,
  doi = {10.1145/3759534.3762681},
}