Luca Chiodini

About

Hi! I'm a postdoctoral researcher at the Software Institute — USI, Lugano (🇨🇭), where I work in the LuCE research lab. There I obtained a PhD with a dissertation on teaching introductory programming using graphics as a domain under the supervision of Matthias Hauswirth. I also spent a semester abroad at Aalto University (🇫🇮) under the supervision of Juha Sorva. My interests in computer science are broad, but my heart lies in teaching. This curriculum describes my path, in case you are interested.

Contacts

If you want to get in touch, feel free to write an email to luca@chiodini.org.

Research

I have been working on improving programming education from several angles. I investigated misconceptions about programming languages, the role of expressions while learning Java, and methodological issues with ad hoc instruments for computing education research. My current main project is PyTamaro, an approach to teach programming using the domain of graphics in an engaging way, emphasizing abstraction and problem decomposition. I created an open-source Python library and a web platform which hosts hundreds of activities and dozens of curricula currently used by teachers at multiple educational levels.

Selected Publications

• Surveying Upper-Secondary Teachers on Programming Misconceptions [PDF] [DOI]
  ICER '25 — Luca Chiodini, Joey Bevilacqua, Matthias Hauswirth
• Two Approaches for Programming Education in the Domain of Graphics: An Experiment [PDF] [DOI]
  ‹Programming› '25 — Luca Chiodini, Juha Sorva, Arto Hellas, Otto Seppälä, Matthias Hauswirth
• Teaching Programming with Graphics: Pitfalls and a Solution [PDF] [DOI]
  SPLASH-E '23 — Luca Chiodini, Juha Sorva, Matthias Hauswirth
• Wrong Answers for Wrong Reasons: The Risks of Ad Hoc Instruments [PDF] [DOI]
  Koli Calling '21 — Luca Chiodini, Matthias Hauswirth
• A Curated Inventory of Programming Language Misconceptions [PDF] [DOI]
  ITiCSE '21 — Luca Chiodini, Igor Moreno Santos, Andrea Gallidabino, Anya Tafliovich, André L. Santos, Matthias Hauswirth

Current and past activities

• I have been part of the technical team behind the Italian and the International Informatics Olympiad in Teams.
• I organized six editions of ABC, an Olympiad-style online programming contest held each year in May.
• In 2017, I participated in the first Italian training program in cybersecurity for students. I placed second in a local final challenge and competed with a team in the national final, held in Rome, ranking second.
• In 2014, I won a bronze medal at the Italian Olympiad in Informatics.

Resources

Over the years I've created and freely shared a number of resources (partially in Italian), which some have found useful:

• Blog post: What the global statement really means in Python
• Blog post: Tutorial on how to create images and GIFs with Asymptote
• Slides of my presentations to train high school students competing in Olympiad in Informatics: regional selection (years 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016) and school selection (years 2019, 2018, 2017).
• My Master's degree thesis, done at LuCE Research Lab to better understand misconceptions when learning to program (related slides).
• My Bachelor's degree thesis, done at Information Retrieval Laboratory to work towards an automatic approach to identify potential binge drinkers on Twitter (related slides).
• My high school thesis, which consisted in developing an automated spelling correction system (related slides).
• Theory of computation class notes.
• Calculus 1 class notes.
• Some solved exercises about signal processing.
• An introductory reading about competitive programming for young students.
• A guide for moving the first steps with JFlex, a lexical analyzer generator.