I wrote this paper for my graduate-level programming languages class as a final project. Here’s the introduction:

There are some readable programming languages out there, and there are powerful programming languages as well, but how often do the two meet? It would be ideal to have both readability and power in a language, but it seems as though one comes at the cost of another. Lisp is an incredibly powerful language, but it is not very readable due to its syntax. Ruby has some constructs that make code read almost like English, but its speed has been criticized when compared with other dynamic languages. Still other languages offer convenience to the programmer through their unique features.

Perhaps it is a pipe dream, but it would be nice if a single language could combine speed, expressiveness, readability of code, and power, all while being convenient and intuitive to write. Some would argue that these traits are already included in an existing language, and the degree to which these goals are met is certainly subjective. Since one person’s elegant construct may be another’s cluttered obfuscation, let this paper then reflect this particular developer’s description of a more perfect language. The goal is to select the nicest features from existing languages as well as include other features that perhaps have not been seen before. The result might not be easily implementable, but that is the scope of this paper as well: to explore interesting ideas for a language beyond what is already known to work.
— One Programmer’s Ideal Language by Sarah Vessels

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This past semester for my software engineering class at UK, I co-authored a paper on ways of testing Ruby on Rails web applications. Here’s the abstract:

Web applications are prevalent and it is important that they be of high quality as businesses, schools, and public services rely upon them. Toward that end, we compared two approaches for testing web applications. The Atomic Section Model (ASM) and the Qian, Miao, Zeng (QMZ) model are both used as a means of generating test cases that traverse a web application. We applied the two models to a Ruby on Rails web application to compare defect detection efficacy. We found that both models performed equally well in terms of total faults detected, though neither model found all seeded and naturally occurring faults. Also, the ASM model detected one fault that the QMZ did not, and vice versa.
— Comparison of Models for Testing Ruby on Rails Web Applications by Darra Ricks and Sarah Vessels

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