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PPIC is an informal meetup to muse on programming interfaces and on, roughly, how to fill the gap between spreadsheets and general-purpose textual programming. The format varies week to week: one week we might discuss a paper or talk, the next someone might present work in progress for feedback, and the next we might argue about some spicy question like, "Do end-users even want to automate their tasks?". Generally, neither presenters or attendess do much preparation: if there's a new idea, we figure it out together and discussion naturally blossoms. Visitors welcome, even if you're not in the Pacific time zone!
To get announcements and the Zoom link, join the Google group.
To suggest a topic, open a Github issue. To edit this page, click here.
For spring 2026, PPIC meets on Tuesdays at 3:30pm in DIB 361 at UCSD and on Zoom.
| Date | Topic | Leader |
|---|---|---|
| Apr 7 | Why was Flash so successful? Draw + Animate Basics 6m Arrow Keys 7m Visual State via Keyframes 5m Rehearsal World (Finzer and Gould 1993) | Matt |
| Mar 31 | No PPIC. UIST Deadline. | |
| Mar 24 | No PPIC. UIST Crunch. | |
| Mar 17 | UIST Prototype | Zhicheng |
| Mar 10 | Spreadsheet Corpus Study Results? | Jacob |
| Mar 3 | "I Wrote This But I Didn't" AI Code Understanding WIP | Bimal |
| Feb 24 | Belidor | Matt |
| Feb 17 | Webstrates and MyWebstrates and Infusion Webstrates (Klokmose 2015) MyWebstrates (Klokmose 2024) Infusion (Basman 2025) | Zhicheng |
| Feb 10 | DynaVis and BISCUIT DynaVis (Vaithilingam 2024) BISCUIT (Cheng 2024) | Brian |
| Feb 3 | Notations, etc. | Dev |
| Jan 27 | Interaction Substrates: Combining Power and Simplicity in Interactive Systems Paper (Mackay and Beaudouin-Lafon 2025) Video Our musings on substrate definitions and basal media | Brian |
For fall 2025, PPIC met on Thursdays at 4pm.
| Date | Topic | Leader |
|---|---|---|
| Dec 18 | MVU with Elm, Tutorial Workshop (maybe build an audio timeline?) | Brian |
| Dec 11 | WIP Update | Josh & Dev |
| Nov 20 | WIP Update: Spreadsheets and/or Programming by Sculpting for Spreadsheets | Jacob |
| Nov 13 | SQUIRE: Interactive UI Authoring via Slot QUery Intermediate REpresentations Paper (Leung 2025) 30s Preview vs Sculpin | Saketh |
| Nov 6 | Sculpin: Direct-Manipulation Transformation of JSON Paper (Josh & Dev UIST 2025) Video | Dev & Josh |
| Oct 30 | Debugger Canvas Paper (DeLine 2012) Video Quickpose Kaleido Demo | Brian |
For late summer 2025, PPIC met on Monday at 1pm.
| Date | Topic | Leader |
|---|---|---|
| Aug 25 | Debugging Lit vs Fancy Programming Interfaces, Part 4 Reacher | Brian |
| Aug 18 | Debugging Lit vs Fancy Programming Interfaces, Part 3 Reacher Formative Study Reacher | Brian |
| Aug 4 | Debugging Lit vs Fancy Programming Interfaces, Part 2 Kubelka et al 2019 Whyline Formative Study Whyline for Alice Whyline for Java | Brian |
| July 28 | Debugging Lit vs Fancy Programming Interfaces Sillito et al 2008 | Brian |
For spring and early summer 2025, PPIC met on Tuesday at 2pm.
| Date | Topic | Leader |
|---|---|---|
| June 17 | Cognitive Dimensions of Notation, #12-13 Paper (Green and Petre 1996) | Brian |
| June 3 | Cognitive Dimensions of Notation, #10-11 Paper (Green and Petre 1996) | Brian |
| May 27 | VL/HCC Submission Recap | Anyone who submitted to VL/HCC |
| May 20 | Cognitive Dimensions of Notation, #7-9 Paper (Green and Petre 1996) | Brian |
| May 6 | Cognitive Dimensions of Notation, #5-6 Paper (Green and Petre 1996) The Expression Problem | Brian |
| Apr 29 | Cognitive Dimensions of Notation, #3-4 Paper (Green and Petre 1996) | Brian |
| Apr 22 | Cognitive Dimensions of Notation, #1-2 Paper (Green and Petre 1996) Musings on “closeness of mapping” | Brian |
| Apr 15 | GUIs for JSON DSLs Prong (McNutt 2023) Ivy (McNutt 2021) | Brian |
For winter 2025, PPIC met on Fridays at 1pm.
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