Philip Guo - UC San Diego

Philip Guo is a professor of Cognitive Science, Design, and Computer Science & Engineering at UC San Diego. His research spans human-computer interaction, computing education, human-centered data science, programming tools, and online learning. He studies how people learn computer programming and data science, and he builds tools to help people better understand code and data.

VIII. Early Full Professor Era (The Tortured Profs Department)

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VII. Associate Professor Era (Folklore)

2025

Vibe Coding, Vibe Checking, and Vibe Blogging: Using Generative AI for Personal-Scale Projects. Philip Guo. O'Reilly Radar, 2025.
Using Generative AI to Build Generative AI: A Case Study of Adding AI Chat to the Python Tutor Code Visualizer. Philip Guo. O'Reilly Radar, 2025.
Undergraduate Computing Tutors' Perceptions of their Roles, Stressors, and Barriers to Effectiveness. Ismael Villegas Molina, Jeannie Kim, Audria Montalvo, Apollo Larragoitia, Rachel S. Lim, Philip J. Guo, Sophia Krause-Levy, Leo Porter. ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE), 2025.

2024

Taking ASCII Drawings Seriously: How Programmers Diagram Code. Devamardeep Hayatpur, Brian Hempel, Kathy Chen, William Duan, Philip J. Guo, Haijun Xia. ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI), 2024. Honorable Mention Paper
Unfold: Enabling Live Programming for Debugging GUI Applications. Ruanqianqian (Lisa) Huang, Philip J. Guo, Sorin Lerner. IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing (VL/HCC), 2024.
Perpetual Teaching Across Temporary Places: Conditions, Motivations, and Practices of New Media Artists Teaching Computing Workshops. Alice Mira Chung and Philip J. Guo. ACM Conference on International Computing Education Research (ICER), 2024.
I Actually Chatted with ChatGPT: Assessing the Usability of Voice Interfaces to Large Language Models. Philip Guo. O'Reilly Radar, 2024.
Expanding Career Pipelines by Unhiding the Hidden Curriculum of University Computing Majors. Philip J. Guo. Computing Research News (from the Computing Research Association), 2024. HTML version

2023

Six Opportunities for Scientists and Engineers to Learn Programming Using AI Tools such as ChatGPT. Philip J. Guo. IEEE Computing in Science and Engineering, 2023.
Real-Real-World Programming with ChatGPT: Taking AI Far Beyond Small Self-Contained Coding Tasks. Philip Guo. O'Reilly Radar, 2023.
From "Ban It Till We Understand It" to "Resistance is Futile": How University Programming Instructors Plan to Adapt as More Students Use AI Code Generation and Explanation Tools such as ChatGPT and GitHub Copilot. Sam Lau and Philip J. Guo. ACM Conference on International Computing Education Research (ICER), 2023.
- summary article: Teaching Programming in the Age of ChatGPT. Sam Lau and Philip Guo. O'Reilly Radar, 2023.
Uncovering the Hidden Curriculum of University Computing Majors via Undergraduate-Written Mentoring Guides: A Learner-Centered Design Workflow. Kendall Nakai and Philip J. Guo. ACM Conference on International Computing Education Research (ICER), 2023.
Teaching Data Science by Visualizing Data Table Transformations: Pandas Tutor for Python, Tidy Data Tutor for R, and SQL Tutor. Sam Lau*, Sean Kross*, Eugene Wu, Philip J. Guo (*equal contribution). International Workshop on Data Systems Education (DataEd), 2023.
- Pandas Tutor and Tidy Data Tutor tools
Unfolding State Changes via Live State-First Debugging. Ruanqianqian (Lisa) Huang, Philip J. Guo, Sorin Lerner. Workshop on Live Programming (LIVE), 2023.

2022

Seq2Parse: Neurosymbolic Parse Error Repair. Georgios Sakkas, Madeline Endres, Philip J. Guo, Westley Weimer, Ranjit Jhala. Object-oriented Programming, Systems, Languages, and Applications (OOPSLA), 2022.
The Design Space of Livestreaming Equipment Setups: Tradeoffs, Challenges, and Opportunities. Ian Drosos and Philip J. Guo. ACM SIGCHI Conference on Designing Interactive Systems (DIS), 2022.
"There's no way to keep up!": Diverse Motivations and Challenges Faced by Informal Learners of ML. Rimika Chaudhury, Philip J. Guo, Parmit K. Chilana. IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing (VL/HCC), 2022.
How Computer Science and Statistics Instructors Approach Data Science Pedagogy Differently: Three Case Studies. Sam Lau, Deborah Nolan, Joseph Gonzalez, Philip J. Guo. ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE), 2022.
The Challenges of Evolving Technical Courses at Scale: Four Case Studies of Updating Large Data Science Courses. Sam Lau, Justin Eldridge, Shannon Ellis, Aaron Fraenkel, Marina Langlois, Suraj Rampure, Janine Tiefenbruck, Philip J. Guo. ACM Conference on Learning at Scale, 2022.
Five Pedagogical Principles of a User-Centered Design Course that Prepares Computing Undergraduates for Industry Jobs. Sean Kross and Philip J. Guo. ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE), 2022.
Scaling Up Access to the Hidden Curriculum: A Design Methodology for Creating Undergraduate Mentoring Guides. Kendall Nakai and Philip J. Guo. ACM Conference on Learning at Scale (work-in-progress), 2022.
Codehound: Helping Instructors Track Pedagogical Code Dependencies in Course Materials. Sam Lau and Philip J. Guo. ACM SIGPLAN SPLASH-E Symposium (SPLASH-E), 2022.

2021

Ten Million Users and Ten Years Later: Python Tutor's Design Guidelines for Building Scalable and Sustainable Research Software in Academia. Philip J. Guo. ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST), 2021. Best Paper Award
Inside the Mind of a CS Undergraduate TA: A Firsthand Account of Undergraduate Peer Tutoring in Computer Labs. Julia M. Markel and Philip J. Guo. ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE), 2021. Best Paper Award
Streamers Teaching Programming, Art, and Gaming: Cognitive Apprenticeship, Serendipitous Teachable Moments, and Tacit Expert Knowledge. Ian Drosos and Philip J. Guo. IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing (VL/HCC), short paper, 2021. Honorable Mention Paper
Orienting, Framing, Bridging, Magic, and Counseling: How Data Scientists Navigate the Outer Loop of Client Collaborations in Industry and Academia. Sean Kross and Philip J. Guo. ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW), 2021.

2020

Wrex: A Unified Programming-by-Example Interaction for Synthesizing Readable Code for Data Scientists. Ian Drosos, Titus Barik, Philip J. Guo, Robert DeLine, Sumit Gulwani. ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI), 2020. Best Paper Award
The Design Space of Computational Notebooks: An Analysis of 60 Systems in Academia and Industry. Sam Lau, Ian Drosos, Julia M. Markel, Philip J. Guo. IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing (VL/HCC), 2020.
Learnersourcing at Scale to Overcome Expert Blind Spots for Introductory Programming: A Three-Year Deployment Study on the Python Tutor Website. Philip J. Guo, Julia M. Markel, Xiong Zhang. ACM Conference on Learning at Scale (work-in-progress), 2020.
Designing the Future of Experiential Learning Environments for a Post-COVID World: A Preliminary Case Study. Julia M. Markel and Philip J. Guo. Symposium on the New Future of Work, 2020.
Papercode: Generating Paper-Based User Interfaces for Code Review, Annotation, and Teaching. Priyan Vaithilingam, Julia M. Markel, Philip J. Guo. ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST) (poster), 2020.
Towards a Dynamic Multiscale Personalized Information Space. Amy Rae Fox, Philip J. Guo, Clemens Nylandsted Klokmose, Peter Dalsgaard, Arvind Satyanarayan, Haijun Xia, James D. Hollan. Convivial Computing Salon (workshop at the <Programming> conference), 2020.
The Essence of Program Semantics Visualizers: A Three-Axis Model. Josh Pollock, Grace Oh, Eunice Jun, Philip J. Guo, Zachary Tatlock. Workshop on Evaluation and Usability of Programming Languages and Tools (PLATEAU), 2020.
Data Theater: A Live Programming Environment for Prototyping Data-Driven Explorable Explanations. Sam Lau and Philip J. Guo. Workshop on Live Programming (LIVE), 2020.

VI. UCSD Assistant Professor Era (Reputation)

2019

Practitioners Teaching Data Science in Industry and Academia: Expectations, Workflows, and Challenges. Sean Kross and Philip J. Guo. ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI), 2019. Honorable Mention Paper
Improv: Teaching Programming at Scale via Live Coding. Charles Chen and Philip J. Guo. ACM Conference on Learning at Scale, 2019.
Software Developers Learning Machine Learning: Motivations, Hurdles, and Desires. Carrie J. Cai and Philip J. Guo. IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing (VL/HCC), 2019. Best Paper Award
End-User Programmers Repurposing End-User Programming Tools to Foster Diversity in Adult End-User Programming Education. Sean Kross and Philip J. Guo. IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing (VL/HCC), 2019.
Bespoke: Interactively Synthesizing Custom GUIs from Command-Line Applications By Demonstration. Priyan Vaithilingam and Philip J. Guo. ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST), 2019.
Mallard: Turn the Web into a Contextualized Prototyping Environment for Machine Learning. Xiong Zhang and Philip J. Guo. ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST), 2019.

2018

Non-Native English Speakers Learning Computer Programming: Barriers, Desires, and Design Opportunities. Philip J. Guo. ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI), 2018.
Mismatch of Expectations: How Modern Learning Resources Fail Conversational Programmers. April Y. Wang, Ryan Mitts, Philip J. Guo, Parmit K. Chilana. ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI), 2018. Honorable Mention Paper
Codemotion: Expanding the Design Space of Learner Interactions with Computer Programming Tutorial Videos. Kandarp Khandwala and Philip J. Guo. ACM Conference on Learning at Scale, 2018.
Students, Systems, and Interactions: Synthesizing the First Four Years of Learning@Scale and Charting the Future. Sean Kross and Philip J. Guo. ACM Conference on Learning at Scale, 2018.
Porta: Profiling Software Tutorials Using Operating-System-Wide Activity Tracing. Alok Mysore and Philip J. Guo. ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST), 2018. Best Paper Award
Fusion: Opportunistic Web Prototyping with UI Mashups. Xiong Zhang and Philip J. Guo. ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST), 2018.
The Impact of Culture on Learner Behavior in Visual Debuggers. Kyle Thayer, Philip J. Guo, Katharina Reinecke. IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing (VL/HCC), 2018.

2017

Older Adults Learning Computer Programming: Motivations, Frustrations, and Design Opportunities. Philip J. Guo. ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI), 2017. Honorable Mention Paper
DS.js: Turn Any Webpage into an Example-Centric Live Programming Environment for Learning Data Science. Xiong Zhang and Philip J. Guo. ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST), 2017. Honorable Mention Paper
Omnicode: A Novice-Oriented Live Programming Environment with Always-On Run-Time Value Visualizations. Hyeonsu Kang and Philip J. Guo. ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST), 2017.
Torta: Generating Mixed-Media GUI and Command-Line App Tutorials Using Operating-System-Wide Activity Tracing. Alok Mysore and Philip J. Guo. ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST), 2017.
HappyFace: Identifying and Predicting Frustrating Obstacles for Learning Programming at Scale. Ian Drosos, Philip J. Guo, Chris Parnin. IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing (VL/HCC), 2017.

V. Rochester Assistant Professor Era (1989)

2017

CodePilot: Scaffolding End-to-End Collaborative Software Development for Novice Programmers. Jeremy Warner and Philip J. Guo. ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI), 2017.
Hack.edu: Examining How College Hackathons Are Perceived By Student Attendees and Non-Attendees. Jeremy Warner and Philip J. Guo. ACM International Computing Education Research conference (ICER), 2017.

2016

Paradise Unplugged: Identifying Barriers for Female Participation on Stack Overflow. Denae Ford, Justin Smith, Philip J. Guo, Chris Parnin. ACM SIGSOFT International Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering (FSE), 2016.
Understanding Conversational Programmers: A Perspective from the Software Industry. Parmit K. Chilana, Rishabh Singh, Philip J. Guo. ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI), 2016.

2015

Codeopticon: Real-Time, One-To-Many Human Tutoring for Computer Programming. Philip J. Guo. ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST), 2015.
Codechella: Multi-User Program Visualizations for Real-Time Tutoring and Collaborative Learning. Philip J. Guo, Jeffery White, Renan Zanelatto. IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing (VL/HCC), 2015.
Codepourri: Creating Visual Coding Tutorials Using A Volunteer Crowd Of Learners. Mitchell Gordon and Philip J. Guo. IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing (VL/HCC), 2015.
Perceptions of Non-CS Majors in Intro Programming: The Rise of the Conversational Programmer. Parmit K. Chilana, Celena Alcock, Shruti Dembla, Anson Ho, Ada Hurst, Brett Armstrong, Philip J. Guo. IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing (VL/HCC), 2015.
Toward a Domain-Specific Visual Discussion Forum for Learning Computer Programming: An Empirical Study of a Popular MOOC Forum. Joyce Zhu, Jeremy Warner, Mitchell Gordon, Jeffery White, Renan Zanelatto, Philip J. Guo. IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing (VL/HCC), 2015.
How High School, College, and Online Students Differentially Engage with an Interactive Digital Textbook. Jeremy Warner, John Doorenbos, Bradley N. Miller, Philip J. Guo. International Conference on Educational Data Mining (EDM), short paper, 2015.

IV. Postdoc Era (Red)

2015

Wait-Learning: Leveraging Wait Time for Second Language Education. Carrie J. Cai, Philip J. Guo, James Glass, Robert C. Miller. ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI), 2015.
OverCode: Visualizing Variation in Student Solutions to Programming Problems at Scale. Elena L. Glassman, Jeremy Scott, Rishabh Singh, Philip J. Guo, Robert C. Miller. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI), 2015.

2014

Data-Driven Interaction Techniques for Improving Navigation of Educational Videos. Juho Kim, Philip J. Guo, Carrie J. Cai, Shang-Wen (Daniel) Li, Krzysztof Z. Gajos, Robert C. Miller. ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST), 2014.
A Direct Manipulation Language for Explaining Algorithms. Jeremy Scott, Philip J. Guo, Randall Davis. IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing (VL/HCC), short paper, 2014.
Crowdsourcing Step-by-Step Information Extraction to Enhance Existing How-to Videos. Juho Kim, Phu Nguyen, Sarah Weir, Philip J. Guo, Robert C. Miller, Krzysztof Z. Gajos. ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI), 2014. Honorable Mention Paper
Demographic Differences in How Students Navigate Through MOOCs. Philip J. Guo and Katharina Reinecke. ACM Conference on Learning at Scale, 2014.
How Video Production Affects Student Engagement: An Empirical Study of MOOC Videos. Philip J. Guo, Juho Kim, Rob Rubin. ACM Conference on Learning at Scale, 2014.
Understanding In-Video Dropouts and Interaction Peaks in Online Lecture Videos. Juho Kim, Philip J. Guo, Daniel T. Seaton, Piotr Mitros, Krzysztof Z. Gajos, Robert C. Miller. ACM Conference on Learning at Scale, 2014.

2013

Online Python Tutor: Embeddable Web-Based Program Visualization for CS Education. Philip J. Guo. ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE), 2013.

III. Ph.D. Dissertation Era (Speak Now)

2012

Characterizing and Predicting Which Bugs Get Reopened. Thomas Zimmermann, Nachiappan Nagappan, Philip J. Guo, Brendan Murphy. ACM/IEEE International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE), Software Engineering In Practice (SEIP) track, 2012. Best Paper Award
Burrito: Wrapping Your Lab Notebook in Computational Infrastructure. Philip J. Guo and Margo Seltzer. USENIX Workshop on the Theory and Practice of Provenance (TaPP), 2012.
Software Tools to Facilitate Research Programming. Philip J. Guo. Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Computer Science, Stanford University, 2012.
HAMPI: A Solver for Word Equations over Strings, Regular Expressions and Context-free Grammars. Adam Kiezun, Vijay Ganesh, Shay Artzi, Philip J. Guo, Pieter Hooimeijer, Michael D. Ernst. ACM Transactions of Software Engineering Methodology (TOSEM), 2012.
CDE: A Tool for Creating Portable Experimental Software Packages. Philip J. Guo. IEEE Computing in Science and Engineering, 2012.

2011

Proactive Wrangling: Mixed-Initiative End-User Programming of Data Transformation Scripts. Philip J. Guo, Sean Kandel, Joseph M. Hellerstein, Jeffrey Heer. ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST), 2011.
Using Automatic Persistent Memoization to Facilitate Data Analysis Scripting. Philip J. Guo and Dawson Engler. International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis (ISSTA), 2011.
Sloppy Python: Using Dynamic Analysis to Automatically Add Error Tolerance to Ad-Hoc Data Processing Scripts. Philip J. Guo. International Workshop on Dynamic Analysis (WODA), 2011.
CDE: Run Any Linux Application On-Demand Without Installation. Philip J. Guo. USENIX Large Installation System Administration Conference (LISA), 2011.
CDE: Using System Call Interposition to Automatically Create Portable Software Packages. Philip J. Guo and Dawson Engler. USENIX Annual Technical Conference, short paper, 2011.
"Not My Bug!" and Other Reasons for Software Bug Report Reassignments. Philip J. Guo, Thomas Zimmermann, Nachiappan Nagappan, Brendan Murphy. ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW), 2011.

2010

Characterizing and Predicting Which Bugs Get Fixed: An Empirical Study of Microsoft Windows. Philip J. Guo, Thomas Zimmermann, Nachiappan Nagappan, Brendan Murphy. IEEE International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE), 2010.
Towards Practical Incremental Recomputation for Scientists: An Implementation for the Python Language. Philip J. Guo and Dawson Engler. USENIX Workshop on the Theory and Practice of Provenance (TaPP), 2010.

II. Early Ph.D. Era (Fearless)

2009

HAMPI: A Solver for String Constraints. Adam Kiezun, Vijay Ganesh, Philip J. Guo, Pieter Hooimeijer, Michael D. Ernst. International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis (ISSTA), 2009. ACM SIGSOFT Distinguished Paper Award, ISSTA 10-Year Impact Paper Award
Linux Kernel Developer Responses to Static Analysis Bug Reports. Philip J. Guo and Dawson Engler. USENIX Annual Technical Conference, short paper, 2009.
Automatic Creation of SQL Injection and Cross-site Scripting Attacks. Adam Kiezun, Philip J. Guo, Karthick Jayaraman, Michael D. Ernst. IEEE International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE), 2009.
Two Studies of Opportunistic Programming: Interleaving Web Foraging, Learning, and Writing Code. Joel Brandt, Philip J. Guo, Joel Lewenstein, Mira Dontcheva, Scott R. Klemmer. ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI), 2009. Honorable Mention Paper
Opportunistic Programming: Writing Code to Prototype, Ideate, and Discover. Joel Brandt, Philip J. Guo, Joel Lewenstein, Mira Dontcheva, Scott R. Klemmer. IEEE Software, 2009.

2008

Opportunistic Programming: How Rapid Ideation and Prototyping Occur in Practice. Joel Brandt, Philip J. Guo, Joel Lewenstein, Scott R. Klemmer. Workshop on End-User Software Engineering (WEUSE), 2008.

I. Undergrad/Masters Student Era (self-titled debut album)

2007

The Daikon system for dynamic detection of likely invariants. Michael D. Ernst, Jeff H. Perkins, Philip J. Guo, Stephen McCamant, Carlos Pacheco, Matthew S. Tschantz, Chen Xiao. Science of Computer Programming, 2007.

2006

Dynamic Inference of Abstract Types. Philip J. Guo, Jeff H. Perkins, Stephen McCamant, Michael D. Ernst. International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis (ISSTA), 2006.
Automatic Inference and Enforcement of Data Structure Consistency Specifications. Brian Demsky, Michael D. Ernst, Philip J. Guo, Stephen McCamant, Jeff H. Perkins, Martin Rinard. International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis (ISSTA), 2006.
A Scalable Mixed-Level Approach to Dynamic Analysis of C and C++ Programs. Philip J. Guo. Master of Engineering (M.Eng.) thesis, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2006. Charles and Jennifer Johnson Award for Outstanding Computer Science Master of Engineering Thesis