Visualization of reasoning: Debugging techniques in ASP
Justin Rodriguez · ThinkTech (Texas Tech University) · 2021
Answer Set Programming (ASP) has been an area of logic programming and knowledge representation filled with a lively community in the academic world. However, despite having such a lively community, it has become increasingly difficult to find appropriate debugging systems that satisfy a majority of what is to be expected by programmers if they were writing a program in any other commonly used language. Recent literature on the subject has focused on mainly incorporating command line and text-based systems as a form of debugging answer set programs. While these systems do indeed aid the programmer in the debugging process, due to the intricacies of logic programming, it can be difficult to present clear reasoning behind why a program or answer set to a program is inconsistent. We propose the introduction of visualization of reasoning approach to debugging logic programs. By visualization of reasoning, we mean a medium of conveying to users the reasoning behind how their programs function (or do not) that is not text-based. One new technique we propose is our “firing” model, where users can see an animation of a sequence in their program during a query. This visualization we hope will give programmers a better understanding of the reasoning behind what the query returns and why parts of their program do not work as intended. Besides applications in debugging, creating a visualization of reasoning can also help in giving students a better understanding of the intricacies of ASP, or about any subject for that matter, as well as provide greater access to learning logic programs. We believe that we have created such visualizations that achieve each one of these aspirations.