PROGRAMMING BY EXAMPLE FOR THE CASUAL USER: A CASE STUDY
Ian H. Witten · Libraries and Cultural Resources (University of Calgary) · 1981
One way of giving casual users access to some of the power of a computer without the need to learn formal programming methods, is to allow complex tasks to be defined extensively by example, rather than intensively by a procedural specification. This paper studies the extent to which iterative computations on an electronic calculator can be inferred interactively from an initial part of the sequence of key-presses, using techniques of non-deterministic structural identification of behaviour sequences. The aim is to construct an interactive device which is partially self-programming. Despite the fact that the device has no prior knowledge of the syntax or semantics of the dialogue, it is remarkably successful. Several short, repetitive calculator problems have been analysed. Even in a mixed sequence, over 75% of the dialogue elements were predicted, with an error rate of between 0.5% and 1.5%. However, casual users have not yet been exposed to the scheme.