Hello, I'm Tom. I'm currently an assistant professor at KUAS. Previously, I did my Ph.D. at Hasso Plattner Institute, University of Potsdam, Germany on the topic of Structured or Block-based Editing and worked with Forever Day One on all things IT.

Contact

Reach me on Github, on Mastodon, or via mail.

Peer Reviewed Publications

Last updated: May 2026

2026

• Toni Mattis, Abdullatif Ghajar, Tom Beckmann, and Robert Hirschfeld. Live in the Loop: Rapid Run-time Feedback for Prompts. In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI) 2026, art. 833, 14 pages, Barcelona, Spain, April 13 - 17, 2026, ACM DL.
• Tom Beckmann, Christoph Thiede, Jens Lincke, and Robert Hirschfeld. Hybrid Structured Editing: Structures for Tools, Text for Users. In Journal on The Art, Science, and Engineering of Programming, vol. 11, no. 1, art. 1, 31 pages, 2026, AOSA, doi.org/10.22152/programming-journal.org/2026/11/1.
• Christoph Thiede, Tom Beckmann, Marcel Taeumel, and Robert Hirschfeld. Literate Exploratory Programming for Asynchronous Collaboration. In Proceedings of the Programming Experience 2026 (PX/26) Workshop, companion volume to the International Conference on the Art, Science, and Engineering of Programming (<Programming>), co-located with the International Conference on the Art, Science, and Engineering of Programming (<Programming>), 11 pages, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich, Germany, March 16, 2026, ACM DL.

2025

• Tom Beckmann, Lukas Böhme, Marcel Taeumel, Robert Hirschfeld. Block-based Editing in a Textual World. In Proceedings of the Workshop on Programming Abstractions and Interactive Notations, Tools, and Environments (PAINT) 2025, ACM DL, doi.org/10.1145/3759534.3762681.
• Lukas Böhme, Christoph Thiede, Toni Mattis, Tom Beckmann, Jens Lincke, Robert Hirschfeld. Toward Bridging the Tool Gap: Equipping Large Language Models with Tools to Answer Programmers’ Questions. In Proceedings of the Workshop on Programming Abstractions and Interactive Notations, Tools, and Environments (PAINT) 2025, ACM DL, doi.org/10.1145/3759534.3762682.
• Tom Beckmann, Eva Krebs, Marcel Garus, Stefan Ramson, and Robert Hirschfeld. Defeating Dragons in The Classroom: Role-playing Games for Teaching Communication and Decision Making Skills in Software Engineering. In Proceedings of the Workshop of the Psychology of Programming Interest Group (PPIG) 2025, Belgrade, Serbia, September 8-10, 2025.
• Patrick Rein, Stefan Ramson, Tom Beckmann, and Robert Hirschfeld. An Information Foraging Interpretation of Liveness. In Proceedings of the IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing (VL/HCC) 2025, Raleigh, North Carolina, United States, October 7-10, 2025.
• Tom Beckmann, Joana Bergsiek, Eva Krebs, Toni Mattis, Stefan Ramson, Martin C. Rinard, and Robert Hirschfeld. Probing the Design Space: Parallel Versions for Exploratory Programming. In Journal on The Art, Science, and Engineering of Programming, vol. 10, no. 1, art. 5, 33 pages, 2025, AOSA, doi.org/10.22152/programming-journal.org/2025/10/5.
• Toni Mattis, Lukas Böhme, Stefan Ramson, Tom Beckmann, Martin C. Rinard, and Robert Hirschfeld. Dimensions of Examples: Toward a Framework for Qualifying Examples in Programming. In Proceedings of the Programming Experience 2025 (PX/25) Workshop, companion volume to the International Conference on the Art, Science, and Engineering of Programming (<Programming>), co-located with the International Conference on the Art, Science, and Engineering of Programming (<Programming>), pages XXX-XXX, Prague, Czechia, June 2, 2025, Schloss Dagstuhl Open Access Series in Informatics (OASIcs).
• Tom Beckmann, Leonard Geier, Stefan Ramson, Marcel Taeumel, and Robert Hirschfeld. Encouraging Experimentation Through Programming by Proximity. In Proceedings of the Programming Experience 2025 (PX/25) Workshop, companion volume to the International Conference on the Art, Science, and Engineering of Programming (<Programming>), co-located with the International Conference on the Art, Science, and Engineering of Programming (<Programming>), pages XXX-XXX, Prague, Czechia, June 2, 2025, Schloss Dagstuhl Open Access Series in Informatics (OASIcs).
• Eva Krebs, Tom Beckmann, Leonard Geier, Jonathan Grenda, Stefan Ramson, and Robert Hirschfeld. All in One: Rapid Game Prototyping in a Single View. In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI) 2025, art. 266, 17 pages, Yokohama, Japan, April 26 - May 1, 2024, ACM DL.
  • © ACM, 2025. This is the authors' version of the work. It is posted here by permission of ACM for your personal use. Not for redistribution. The definitive version will be published in the proceedings of the Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems.

2024

• Patrick Rein, Stefan Ramson, Tom Beckmann, and Robert Hirschfeld. Does Task Complexity Moderate the Benefits of Liveness? - A Controlled Experiment. In Journal on The Art, Science, and Engineering of Programming, vol. 9, no. 1, art. 1, 39 pages, 2024, AOSA, doi.org/10.22152/programming-journal.org/2025/9/1.
• Tom Beckmann, Jan Reppien, Jens Lincke, and Robert Hirschfeld. Supporting Construction of Domain-Specific Representations in Textual Source Code. In Proceedings of the Workshop on Programming Abstractions and Interactive Notations, Tools, and Environments (PAINT) 2024, co-located with the Conference on Systems, Programming, Languages, and Applications: Software for Humanity (SPLASH), pages 17-28, Pasadena, California, USA, October 22, 2024, ACM DL.
  • © ACM, 2024. This is the authors' version of the work. It is posted here by permission of ACM for your personal use. Not for redistribution. The definitive version will be published in the proceedings of the Workshop on Programming Abstractions and Interactive Notations, Tools, and Environments.
• Daniel Stachnik, Tom Beckmann, Patrick Rein, and Robert Hirschfeld. SpecTacles: Supporting Control Flow Comprehension of Software Developers in TLA+. In Proceedings of the IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing (VL/HCC) 2024, pages 174-186, Liverpool, UK, September 2-6, 2024, IEEE, doi.org/10.1109/VL/HCC60511.2024.00028.
  • © IEEE, 2024. This is the authors' version of the work. It is posted here by permission of IEEE for your personal use. Not for redistribution. The definitive version will be published in the proceedings of the Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing.
• Tom Beckmann, Eva Krebs, Leonard Geier, Lukas Böhme, Stefan Ramson, and Robert Hirschfeld. Ghost in The Paper: Player Reflex Testing with Computational Paper Prototypes. In Proceedings of the Workshop of the Psychology of Programming Interest Group (PPIG) 2024, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, UK, September 2-6, 2024.
• Paul Methfessel, Tom Beckmann, Patrick Rein, Stefan Ramson, and Robert Hirschfeld. MμSE: Supporting Exploration of Software-Hardware Interactions Through Examples. In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI) 2024, art. 936, 16 pages, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA, May 11-16, 2024, ACM DL.
  • © ACM, 2024. This is the authors' version of the work. It is posted here by permission of ACM for your personal use. Not for redistribution. The definitive version will be published in the proceedings of the Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems.

2023

• Lukas Böhme, Tom Beckmann, Sebastian Baltes, and Robert Hirschfeld. A Penny a Function: Towards Cost Transparent Cloud Programming. In Proceedings of the Workshop on Programming Abstractions and Interactive Notations, Tools, and Environments (PAINT) 2023, co-located with the Conference on Systems, Programming, Languages, and Applications: Software for Humanity (SPLASH), pages 1-10, Cascais, Portugal, October 22-23, 2023, ACM DL.
  • © ACM, 2023. This is the authors' version of the work. It is posted here by permission of ACM for your personal use. Not for redistribution. The definitive version will be published in the proceedings of the Workshop on Programming Abstractions and Interactive Notations, Tools, and Environments.
• Tom Beckmann, Daniel Stachnik, Jens Lincke, and Robert Hirschfeld. Visual Replacements: Cross-language Domain-specific Representations in Structured Editors. In Proceedings of the Workshop on Programming Abstractions and Interactive Notations, Tools, and Environments (PAINT) 2023, co-located with the Conference on Systems, Programming, Languages, and Applications: Software for Humanity (SPLASH), pages 25-35, Cascais, Portugal, October 22-23, 2023, ACM DL.
  • © ACM, 2023. This is the authors' version of the work. It is posted here by permission of ACM for your personal use. Not for redistribution. The definitive version will be published in the proceedings of the Workshop on Programming Abstractions and Interactive Notations, Tools, and Environments.
• Eva Krebs, Tom Beckmann, Leonard Geier, Stefan Ramson, and Robert Hirschfeld. Pronto: Prototyping a Prototyping Tool for Game Mechanic Prototyping. In Proceedings of the Workshop of the Psychology of Programming Interest Group (PPIG) 2023, pages 157-168, Lund University, Lund, Sweden, August 21-25, 2023.
• Patrick Rein, Tom Beckmann, Eva Krebs, Toni Mattis, and Robert Hirschfeld. Too Simple? Notions of Task Complexity used in Maintenance-based Studies of Programming Tools. In Proceedings of the IEEE/ACM International Conference on Program Comprehension (ICPC) 2023, pages 254-265, Melbourne, Australia, May 15-16, 2023, ACM DL, doi.org/10.1109/ICPC58990.2023.00040.
  • © ACM, 2023. This is the authors' version of the work. It is posted here by permission of ACM for your personal use. Not for redistribution. The definitive version will be published in the proceedings of the International Conference on Program Comprehension.
• Tom Beckmann, Patrick Rein, Stefan Ramson, Joana Bergsiek, and Robert Hirschfeld. Structured Editing for All: Deriving Usable Structured Editors from Grammars. In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI) 2023, art. 595, 16 pages, Hamburg, Germany, April 23-28, 2023, ACM DL.
  • © ACM, 2023. This is the authors' version of the work. It is posted here by permission of ACM for your personal use. Not for redistribution. The definitive version will be published in the proceedings of the Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems.
• Leonard Geier, Paul Methfessel, Tom Beckmann, and Robert Hirschfeld. Asymmetric Performance in Virtual Reality and Code. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Live Coding (ICLC) 2023, 7 pages, Utrecht, Netherlands, April 19-23, 2023, doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7843896.

2022

• Patrick Rein, Tom Beckmann, Leonard Geier, Toni Mattis, and Robert Hirschfeld. Competitive Debugging: Toward Contests Promoting Debugging as a Skill. In Proceedings of the ACM Symposium for New Ideas, New Paradigms, and Reflections on Everything to do with Programming and Software (Onward!) 2022, co-located with the Conference on Object-oriented Programming, Systems, Languages, and Applications (OOPSLA), pages 172-184, Auckland, New Zealand, December 5-10, 2022, ACM DL.
  • © ACM, 2022. This is the authors' version of the work. It is posted here by permission of ACM for your personal use. Not for redistribution. The definitive version will be published in the proceedings of Onward!.
• Tom Beckmann, Patrick Rein, Toni Mattis, and Robert Hirschfeld. Partial Parsing for Structured Editors. In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Software Language Engineering (SLE) 2022, co-located with the Conference on Object-oriented Programming, Systems, Languages, and Applications (OOPSLA), pages 110-120, Auckland, New Zealand, December 5-10, 2022, ACM DL.
  • © ACM, 2022. This is the authors' version of the work. It is posted here by permission of ACM for your personal use. Not for redistribution. The definitive version will be published in the proceedings of the Conference on Software Language Engineering.
• Leonard Geier, Clemens Tiedt, Tom Beckmann, Marcel Taeumel, and Robert Hirschfeld. Toward a VR-native Live Programming Environment. In Proceedings of the Workshop on Programming Abstractions and Interactive Notations, Tools, and Environments (PAINT) 2022, co-located with the Conference on Object-oriented Programming, Systems, Languages, and Applications (OOPSLA), pages 26-34, Auckland, New Zealand, December 5-10, 2022, ACM DL.
  • © ACM, 2022. This is the authors' version of the work. It is posted here by permission of ACM for your personal use. Not for redistribution. The definitive version will be published in the proceedings of the Workshop on Programming Abstractions and Interactive Notations, Tools, and Environments.
• Toni Mattis, Tom Beckmann, Patrick Rein, and Robert Hirschfeld. First-Class Concepts: Reified Architectural Knowledge: Beyond Dominant Decompositions. In Journal of Object Technology (JOT), AITO, vol. 21, no. 2, pages 1:1-15, 2022, www.jot.fm, dx.doi.org/10.5381/jot.2022.21.2.a6.
• Patrick Rein, Tom Beckmann, Toni Mattis, and Robert Hirschfeld. Toward Understanding Task Complexity in Maintenance-based Studies of Programming Tools. In Proceedings of the Programming Experience 2022 (PX/22) Workshop, companion volume to the International Conference on the Art, Science, and Engineering of Programming (<Programming>), co-located with the International Conference on the Art, Science, and Engineering of Programming (<Programming>), pages 38-45, Porto, Portugal, March 21, 2022, ACM DL.
  • © ACM, 2022. This is the authors' version of the work. It is posted here by permission of ACM for your personal use. Not for redistribution. The definitive version will be published in the proceedings of the Programming Experience Workshop and the companion volume to International Conference on the Art, Science, and Engineering of Programming (<Programming>).

2021

• Mauricio Verano Merino, Tom Beckmann, Tijs van der Storm, Robert Hirschfeld, and Jurgen Vinju. Getting Grammars into Shape for Block-based Editors. In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Software Language Engineering (SLE) 2021, co-located with the Conference on Object-oriented Programming, Systems, Languages, and Applications (OOPSLA), Chicago, Illinois, USA, October 17-19, 2021, ACM DL.
  • © ACM, 2021. This is the authors' version of the work. It is posted here by permission of ACM for your personal use. Not for redistribution. The definitive version will be published in the proceedings of the Conference on Software Language Engineering.
• Tom Beckmann, Eva Krebs, Patrick Rein, Stefan Ramson, and Robert Hirschfeld. Shortening Feedback Loops in a Live Game Development Environment (Short Paper). In Proceedings of the IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing (VL/HCC) 2021, St. Louis, Missouri, USA, October 10-13, 2021, IEEE.
  • © IEEE, 2021. Personal use of this material is permitted. However, permission to reprint/republish this material for advertising or promotional purposes or for creating new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists or to reuse any copyrighted component of this work in other works must be obtained from IEEE.
• Toni Mattis, Tom Beckmann, Patrick Rein, and Robert Hirschfeld. First-class Concepts: Reifying Architectural Knowledge Beyond the Dominant Decomposition. In Proceedings of the Virtual Workshop on Context-oriented Programming (COP) 2021, co-located with the European Conference on Object-oriented Programming (ECOOP), pages 9-15, Aarhus, Denmark, July 12, 2021, ACM DL.
  • © ACM, 2021. This is the authors' version of the work. It is posted here by permission of ACM for your personal use. Not for redistribution. The definitive version will be published in the proceedings of the Workshop on Context-oriented Programming.

2020

• Tom Beckmann, Stefan Ramson, Patrick Rein, and Robert Hirschfeld. Visual Design for a Tree-oriented Projectional Editor. In Proceedings of the Virtual Programming Experience 2020 (PX/20) Workshop, companion volume to the International Conference on the Art, Science, and Engineering of Programming (<Programming>), co-located with the International Conference on the Art, Science, and Engineering of Programming (<Programming>), pages 113-119, Porto, Portugal, March 23, 2020, ACM DL.
  • © ACM, 2020. This is the authors' version of the work. It is posted here by permission of ACM for your personal use. Not for redistribution. The definitive version will be published in the proceedings of the Programming Experience Workshop and the companion volume to International Conference on the Art, Science, and Engineering of Programming (<Programming>).

2019

• Tom Beckmann, Christian Flach, Eva Krebs, Stefan Ramson, Patrick Rein, and Robert Hirschfeld. An Exploratory Literature Study on Live-Tooling in the Game Industry. In Proceedings of the Workshop on Live Programming Systems (LIVE) 2019, co-located with the Conference on Object-oriented Programming, Systems, Languages, and Applications (OOPSLA), 6 pages, Athens, Greece, October 20, 2019.
• Corinna Jaschek, Tom Beckmann, Jaime A. Garcia, and William L. Raffe. Mysterious Murder: MCTS-driven Murder Mystery Generation. In Proceedings of the IEEE Conference on Games (GOG) 2019, 8 pages, London, UK, August 20-23, 2019, IEEE.
  • © IEEE, 2019. Personal use of this material is permitted. However, permission to reprint/republish this material for advertising or promotional purposes or for creating new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists or to reuse any copyrighted component of this work in other works must be obtained from IEEE.

Technical Reports

• Rieke Freund, Jan Philip Rätsch, Franziska Hradilak, Benedikt Vidic, Oliver Heß, Nils Lißner, Hendrik Wölert, Jens Lincke, Tom Beckmann, and Robert Hirschfeld. Implementing a Crowd-Sourced Picture Archive for Bad Harzburg. HPI Technical Reports, vol. 149, 2023, Hasso Plattner Institute.
• Tom Beckmann, Justus Hildebrand, Corinna Jaschek, Eva Krebs, Alexander Löser, Marcel Taeumel, Tobias Pape, Lasse Fister, and Robert Hirschfeld. The Font Engineering Platform: Collaborative Font Creation in a Self-supporting Programming Environment. HPI Technical Reports, vol. 128, 2019, Hasso Plattner Institute.

Teaching

Co-Supervised Mastertheses

• Probing the Design Space: Parallel Versions for Exploratory Programming (submitted 2025)
• Augmentation Builder: Design and Implementation of a Toolkit for Matching Source Code Structures (submitted 2024)
• Explorable TLA+ Specifications (submitted 2024)
• Example-Based Live Programming for Embedded Systems (submitted 2023)
• A Programming Environment in Virtual Reality: Reducing Friction and Tightening Feedback Loops for VR Development (submitted 2023)
• SuperMan-Page: Überbrückung von Intention und Ausdruck in Bash (submitted 2023)
• Exploring Polyglot Programming with Shared Runtimes: Building a Polyglot Graphics Backend for and in TruffleSqueak (submitted 2022)

Courses

Academic Community Participation

Tom Beckmann
c/o Fachgebiet Softwarearchitekturen
Hasso-Plattner-Institut
Prof.-Dr.-Helmert-Str. 2-3
D-14482 Potsdam

Tom Beckmann