Investigating the Effects of Integrating Handcrafted Code in Model-Driven Engineering

Where model-driven engineering (MDE) requires models to interact with general-purpose programming language (GPL) artifacts, sophisticated patterns for the integration of generated and handcrafted code are required. This raises a gap between modeling and programming which requires developers to switch between both activities and their contexts. Action languages that enable interacting with GPL artifacts on model level can alleviate the need for switching, but cannot rely on the mature development tools of GPLs. We propose to investigate the acceptance and effects of MDE with action languages that GPL interaction. To this effect, we present a study design for comparing MDE with integration of handcrafted artifacts to pervasive MDE with action languages. In this study, participants develop the behavior of selected components of the software architecture of a small autonomous robot using either the delegation pattern or a Java-like action language. With this, we aim to uncover which method yields better acceptance and performance results.