Software Architecture Group (HPI)

The Software Architecture Group, headed by Prof. Dr. Robert Hirschfeld, explores various means of improving the overall programming experience for both professional and non-professional programmers. The group investigates methods to help in the understanding, development, and evolution of concepts and designs of complex software systems. The group‘s research focuses on programming languages, software modularity, tool support, runtime artifacts, and execution environments.

Probing the Design Space: Parallel Versions for Exploratory Programming received the AOSA 2025 Editor’s Choice Award (more)
Abdullatif Ghajar (Exploratory Programming with Result-First AI Code Generation) won First Prize in the ACM Student Research Competition (Graduate Category) at the International Conference on the Art, Science, and Engineering of Programming (<Programming>) 2025 (more)
Leonard Geier (Self-Sustainability for VR Programming) won Second Prize in the ACM Student Research Competition (Graduate Category) at the International Conference on the Art, Science, and Engineering of Programming (<Programming>) 2025 (more)
Lukas Böhme (Can LLMs Answer Developers' Most Pressing Questions? A Benchmark) won Third Prize in the ACM Student Research Competition (Graduate Category) at the International Conference on the Art, Science, and Engineering of Programming (<Programming>) 2025 (more)
Alicia Cabrejas-Leonhardt, Haruko Schmidt, Leo Sonnenberg, Sarah Wolf, Ekaterina Bogacheva, Fabian Moeller, and Karl Duda as a group (Levelling Up IT Learning) won First Prize in the ACM Student Research Competition (Undergraduate Category) at the International Conference on the Art, Science, and Engineering of Programming (<Programming>) 2025 (more)
SqueakJS: A Modern and Practical Smalltalk that Runs in Any Browser received the ACM SIGPLAN DLS Most Notable Paper Award 2024 for 2014 (more)
Broadening the View of Live Programmers: Integrating a Cross-Cutting Perspective on Run-Time Behavior into a Live Programming Environment received the AOSA 2024 Editor’s Choice Award (more)
Prof. Harumi Watanabe from Tokai University visits our group August 15-25, 2023.
Notes on "Notes on the Synthesis of Form" – Dawning Insights in Early Christopher Alexander received the AOSA 2023 Reviewers' Choice Award (more)
The Programming Journal (Journal on The Art, Science, and Engineering of Programming) Vol. 7 available (more)
Patrick Rein received the ECOOP 2022 Distinguished Artifact Reviewer Award (more)
Squeak 6.0 available (more)
"S/Kogi: Getting Grammars into Shape for Block-based Editors" received the ACM SIGPLAN SLE 2021 Distinguished Artifact Award (more)
Tobias Pape and Patrick Rein received the AOSA Outstanding Service Award 2021 (more)
ECOOP 2020 proceedings available (more)
Science of Computer Programming ECOOP 2020 special issue available (more)
Prof. Harumi Watanabe from Tokai University joined our group for her sabbatical from March until September 2020. Thank you!
Fabio Niephaus joined the GraalVM Project Advisory Board (more)
Fabio Niephaus on JVM ADVENT about Smalltalk With the GraalVM (more)
Fabio Niephaus on the GraalVM Blog about the HPI Polyglot Programming Seminar (more)
Fabio Niephaus received the ESUG Innovation Technology Award 2019 (more)
NII Shonan Seminar No. 147 on Self-supporting, Extensible Programming Languages and Environments for Exploratory, Live Software Development (more)
Unravel Programming Sessions with THRESHER received the Japan Society for Software Science and Technology (JSSST) Best Paper Award 2017 (more)
Patrick Rein won First Prize in the ACM Student Research Competition (Graduate Category) at the International Conference on the Art, Science, and Engineering of Programming (<Programming>) 2019 (more)
Richard P. Gabriel received the ACM Onward! Most Notable Paper Award 2018 for 2008 (more)
Toni Mattis won Third Prize in the ACM Student Research Competition (Graduate Category) at the International Conference on the Art, Science, and Engineering of Programming (<Programming>) 2018 (more)
Richard P. Gabriel received the AOSA Outstanding Reviewer Award 2018 (more)
Robert Hirschfeld received the AOSA Outstanding Service Award 2018 (more)
Fabio Niephaus won First Prize in the ACM Student Research Competition (Graduate Category) at the International Conference on the Art, Science, and Engineering of Programming (<Programming>) 2017 (more)
Toni Mattis won Second Prize in the ACM Student Research Competition (Graduate Category) at the International Conference on the Art, Science, and Engineering of Programming (<Programming>) 2017 (more)
Patrick Rein won Third Prize in the ACM Student Research Competition (Graduate Category) at the International Conference on the Art, Science, and Engineering of Programming (<Programming>) 2017 (more)
Tobias Dürschmid won First Prize in the ACM Student Research Competition (Undergraduate Category) at the International Conference on the Art, Science, and Engineering of Programming (<Programming>) 2017 (more)
Tobias Pape and Richard P. Gabriel received the AOSA Outstanding Service Award 2017 (more)
Fabio Niephaus received the ESUG Innovation Technology Award 2016 (more)
Squeak Community Projects (more)
Language Constructs for Context-oriented Programming–An Overview of ContextL received the ACM SIGPLAN DLS Most Notable Paper Award 2015 for 2005 (more)

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