A language-based editing process for visual object-oriented programming
Chung-Hua Wang, Feng-Jian Wang · ACM SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes · 1998
In object-oriented programming languages, encapsulation, inheritance, and polymorphism are the language elements used to provide modularity, reusability, and extensibility.On the other hand, these features are themselves the barriers to understand, maintain, debug, and even construct programs.To tackle, or at least alleviate, this problem, a language-based editing process was designed and incorporated into our visual object-oriented programming environment.This editing process, which consists of two key elements: syntax-directed editing facilities and an inplace editing assistant, facilitates object-oriented program development by providing useful programming guidance and reducing potential programming errors.So far we have developed a window-based prototype using Visual C++ and the Microsoft foundation class library.