On a laboratory for the study of automating programming
Thomas E. Cheatham, Ben Wegbreit · 1972
At the present time there is considerable interest in the general question of “automating programming:” there are a number of people actively doing research concerned with various aspects of the question and even a few projects exploring various practical issues via experimental implementations. The area encompassed by “automating programming” is a very broad one, particularly if one understands “programming” to include the entire spectrum of activities concerned with producing algorithms which are correct and effective in terms of certain design specifications. It is therefore to be expected that comparison of various techniques and integration of those techniques and the experimental facilities developed in a variety of institutions will be difficult and expensive unless there is some coordinated effort to provide a common framework to support such activities. We would note that at present it is relatively expensive just to construct sufficient programs to permit the investigation of and experimentation with some proposed technique of program automation; because of this many studies in the general area of programming automation are primarily “paper studies”.