Programming languages let their users feel terrible or smooth just like GUI designing does. When it comes with bad syntax features, users endure it with twitching fingers and eyes. And such issues already wasted a lot of time and other resources due to wars between language's fans and opponents ( ex: "goto considered harmful", "Node.js is cancer" ... ).
I wonder why UI designing at least became a researching target and own some stable standard like the distance between of user's mouse and the target component while languages didn't. I know some issues related to semantics, not only syntax. But I seriously feel these arguments should be formalized by some strong enough standards.
It seems there is a course at Cambridge entitled "Usability of Programming Languages" that addresses this exact issue.
From the 2015-16 course page:
A programming language is essentially a means of communicating between humans and computers. Traditional computer science research has studied the machine end of the communications link at great length, but there is a shortage of knowledge and research methods for understanding the human end of the link. This course provides practical research skills necessary to make advances in this essential field.
The same page lists the following recommended reading:
- Online proceedings of the Psychology of Programming Interest Group
- Cambridge guidance for human participants in technology research
- Cairns, P. and Cox, A.L. (2008) Research Methods for Human-Computer Interaction. Cambridge University Press.
- Hoc, J.M, Green , T.R.G, Samurcay, R and Gilmore, D.J (Eds.) (1990) Psychology of Programming. Academic Press.
- Carroll, J.M. (Ed) (2003). HCI Models, Theories and Frameworks: Toward a multidisciplinary science. Morgan Kaufmann.
The 2015 lecture notes seem like a good place to start: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/teaching/1415/P201/p201-lecturenotes-2015.pdf