Invited research overview: end-user programming

ABSTRACT

In the past few decades there has been considerable work on empowering end users to be able to write their own programs, and as a result, users are indeed doing so. In fact, we estimate that over 12 million people in American workplaces would say that they "do programming" at work, and almost 50 million people use spreadsheets or databases (and therefore may potentially program), compared to only 3 million professional programmers. The "programming" systems used by these end users include spreadsheet systems, web authoring tools, business process authoring tools such as Visual Basic, graphical languages for demonstrating the desired behavior of educational simulations, and even professional languages such as Java. The motivation for end-user programming is to have the computer be useful for each person's specific individual needs. While the empirical study of programming has been an HCI topic since the beginning the field, it is only recently that there has been a focus on the End-User Programmer as a separate class from novices who are assumed to be studying to be professional programmers. Another recent focus is on making end-user programming more reliable, using "End-User Software Engineering." This paper gives a brief summary of some current and past research in the area of End-User Programming.

REFERENCES

• 1: Robin Abraham , Martin Erwig, Header and Unit Inference for Spreadsheets Through Spatial Analyses, Proceedings of the 2004 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages - Human Centric Computing (VLHCC'04), p.165-172, September 26-29, 2004 [doi>10.1109/VLHCC.2004.29]
• 2: Michael Bolin , Matthew Webber , Philip Rha , Tom Wilson , Robert C. Miller, Automation and customization of rendered web pages, Proceedings of the 18th annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology, October 23-26, 2005, Seattle, WA, USA [doi>10.1145/1095034.1095062]
• 3: Burnett, M., "Visual Programming," in Encyclopedia of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, J.G. Webster, Editor 1999, John WIley & Sons Inc.
• 4: Margaret Burnett , Sudheer Kumar Chekka , Rajeev Pandey, FAR: An End-User Language to Support Cottage E-Services, Proceedings of the IEEE 2001 Symposia on Human Centric Computing Languages and Environments (HCC'01), p.195, September 05-07, 2001
• 5: Margaret Burnett , Curtis Cook , Gregg Rothermel, End-user software engineering, Communications of the ACM, v.47 n.9, September 2004 [doi>10.1145/1015864.1015889]
• 6: Margaret M. Burnett , Adele Goldberg , Ted G. Lewis, Visual Object-Oriented Programming: Concepts and Environments, Manning Publications Co., Greenwich, CT, 1995
• 7: Bill Curtis, Fifteen years of psychology in software engineering: Individual differences and cognitive science, Proceedings of the 7th international conference on Software engineering, p.97-106, March 26-29, 1984, Orlando, Florida, United States
• 8: Allen Cypher, EAGER: programming repetitive tasks by example, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems: Reaching through technology, p.33-39, April 27-May 02, 1991, New Orleans, Louisiana, United States [doi>10.1145/108844.108850]
• 9: Allen Cypher , Daniel C. Halbert , David Kurlander , Henry Lieberman , David Maulsby , Brad A. Myers , Alan Turransky, Watch what I do: programming by demonstration, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1993
• 10: Deursen, A.v., Klint, P., and Visser, J., Domain-Specific Languages: An Annotated Bibliography. 1998. http://homepages.cwi.nl/~arie/papers/dslbib/.
• 11: Ephraim P. Glinert, Visual Programming Environments: Paradigms and Systems, IEEE Computer Society Press, Los Alamitos, CA, 1990
• 12: Green, T.R.G. and Petre, M., "Usability Analysis of Visual Programming Environments: A 'Cognitive Dimensions' Framework." Journal of Visual Languages and Computing, 1996. 7(2): pp. 131--174.
• 13: Haibt, L.M. "A Program to Draw Multi-Level Flow Charts," in Proceedings of the Western Joint Computer Conference. March 3-5, 1959. San Francisco, CA: 15. pp. 131--137.
• 14: Daniel Conrad Halbert, Programming by example, 1984
• 15: Hoc, J.-M., et al., eds. Psychology of Programming. 1990, Academic Press: London.
• 16: Hoc, J.-M. and Nguyen-Xuan, A., "Language Semantics, Mental Models and Analogy," in Psychology of Programming, J.-M. Hoc, et al., Editors. 1990, Academic Press. London. pp. 139--156.
• 17: Kahn, K., "ToonTalk -- An Animated Programming Environment for Children." Journal of Visual Languages and Computing, 1996. 7(2): pp. 197--217.
• 18: Eser Kandogan , Eben Haber , Rob Barrett , Allen Cypher , Paul Maglio , Haixia Zhao, A1: end-user programming for web-based system administration, Proceedings of the 18th annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology, October 23-26, 2005, Seattle, WA, USA [doi>10.1145/1095034.1095070]
• 19: Caitlin Kelleher , Randy Pausch, Lowering the barriers to programming: A taxonomy of programming environments and languages for novice programmers, ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR), v.37 n.2, p.83-137, June 2005 [doi>10.1145/1089733.1089734]
• 20: Ko, A.J. and Myers, B.A. "Development and Evaluation of a Model of Programming Errors," in IEEE EUP/VL/HCC. 2003. New Zealand: pp. 7--14.
• 21: Andrew J. Ko , Brad A. Myers, Designing the whyline: a debugging interface for asking questions about program behavior, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, p.151-158, April 24-29, 2004, Vienna, Austria [doi>10.1145/985692.985712]
• 22: Andrew J. Ko , Brad A. Myers , Htet Htet Aung, Six Learning Barriers in End-User Programming Systems, Proceedings of the 2004 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages - Human Centric Computing (VLHCC'04), p.199-206, September 26-29, 2004 [doi>10.1109/VLHCC.2004.47]
• 23: Clayton Lewis , Gary Olson, Can principles of cognition lower the barriers to programming?, Empirical studies of programmers: second workshop, Ablex Publishing Corp., Norwood, NJ, 1987
• 24: Yang Li , James A. Landay, Informal prototyping of continuous graphical interactions by demonstration, Proceedings of the 18th annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology, October 23-26, 2005, Seattle, WA, USA [doi>10.1145/1095034.1095071]
• 25: Lieberman, H. "Constructing Graphical User Interfaces by Example," in Proceedings Graphics Interface. May, 1982. Toronto, Ontario, Canada: pp. 295--302. GI'82.
• 26: Lieberman, H., ed. Your Wish is My Command. 2001, Morgan Kaufmann: San Francisco.
• 27: James Lin , Mark W. Newman , Jason I. Hong , James A. Landay, DENIM: finding a tighter fit between tools and practice for Web site design, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, p.510-517, April 01-06, 2000, The Hague, The Netherlands [doi>10.1145/332040.332486]
• 28: Richard G. McDaniel , Brad A. Myers, Getting more out of programming-by-demonstration, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems: the CHI is the limit, p.442-449, May 15-20, 1999, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States [doi>10.1145/302979.303127]
• 29: Miller, P., et al., "Evolution of Novice Programming Environments: The Structure Editors of Carnegie Mellon University." Interactive Learning Environments, 1994. 4(2): pp. 140--158.
• 30: Robert C. Miller , Brad A. Myers, Interactive Simultaneous Editing of Multiple Text Regions, Proceedings of the General Track: 2002 USENIX Annual Technical Conference, p.161-174, June 25-30, 2001
• 31: Mark Minas, Diagram Editing with Hypergraph Parser Support, Proceedings of the 1997 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages (VL '97), p.226, April 23-26, 1997
• 32: Modugno, F. and Myers, B.A., "Visual Programming in a Visual Shell -- A Unified Approach." Journal of Visual Languages and Computing, 1997. 8(5/6): pp. 276--308.
• 33: Myers, B.A., "Taxonomies of Visual Programming and Program Visualization." Journal of Visual Languages and Computing, Mar, 1990. 1(1): pp. 97--123.
• 34: Brad A. Myers , David Canfield Smith , Bruce Horn, Report of the “End-User Programming” working group, Languages for developing user interfaces, A. K. Peters, Ltd., Natick, MA, 1992
• 35: Bonnie A. Nardi, A small matter of programming: perspectives on end user computing, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1993
• 36: Pane, J.F. and Myers, B.A., Usability Issues in the Design of Novice Programming Systems. School of Computer Science Technical Report, Carnegie Mellon University, CMU-CS-96-132, August, 1996. Pittsburgh, PA. http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~pane/tr96/. Also appears as Carnegie Mellon University Human-Computer Interaction Institute Technical Report CMU-HCII-96-101.
• 37: John F. Pane , Brad A. Myers, Tabular and Textual Methods for Selecting Objects from a Group, Proceedings of the 2000 IEEE International Symposium on Visual Languages (VL'00), p.157, September 10-13, 2000
• 38: John F. Pane , Brad A. Myers , Chotirat Ann Ratanamahatana, Studying the language and structure in non-programmers' solutions to programming problems, International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, v.54 n.2, p.237-264, Feb. 2001 [doi>10.1006/ijhc.2000.0410]
• 39: Seymour Papert, Teaching children thinking (LOGO memo), Massachusetts Institute of Technology, A.I. Laboratory, 1971
• 40: Seymour Papert, Mindstorms: Children, computers, and powerful ideas, Basic Books, Inc., New York, NY, 1980
• 41: Pausch, R., et al., "Alice: A Rapid Prototyping System for 3D Graphics." IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications, 1995. 15(3): pp. 8--11. May.
• 42: Roy D. Pea , D. Midian Kurland, On the cognitive effects of learning computer programming, Mirrors of minds: patterns of experience in educational computing, Ablex Publishing Corp., Norwood, NJ, 1987
• 43: Orna Raz , Philip Koopman , Mary Shaw, Semantic anomaly detection in online data sources, Proceedings of the 24th International Conference on Software Engineering, May 19-25, 2002, Orlando, Florida [doi>10.1145/581339.581378]
• 44: Mitchel Resnick , Brian Silverman, Some reflections on designing construction kits for kids, Proceeding of the 2005 conference on Interaction design and children, p.117-122, June 08-10, 2005, Boulder, Colorado [doi>10.1145/1109540.1109556]
• 45: Rode, J. and Rosson, M.B. "Programming at Runtime: Requirements and paradigms for nonprogrammer web application development," in IEEE Symposium on Human-Centric Computing Languages and Environments. 2003.
• 46: Mary Beth Rosson , John M. Carrol , Rachel K. E. Bellamy, Smalltalk scaffolding: a case study of minimalist instruction, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems: Empowering people, p.423-430, April 01-05, 1990, Seattle, Washington, United States [doi>10.1145/97243.97319]
• 47: Christopher Scaffidi , Mary Shaw , Brad Myers, Estimating the Numbers of End Users and End User Programmers, Proceedings of the 2005 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing (VL/HCC'05), p.207-214, September 20-24, 2005 [doi>10.1109/VLHCC.2005.34]
• 48: Shirky, C., Economics & Culture, Media & Community, Open Source. March 30, 2004. http://www.shirky.com/writings/situated_software.html. (First published on the "Networks, Economics, and Culture" mailing list).
• 49: Ben Shneiderman, Software psychology: Human factors in computer and information systems (Winthrop computer systems series), Winthrop Publishers, 1980
• 50: N. C. Shu, Visual programming, Van Nostrand Reinhold Co., New York, NY, 1988
• 51: Sime, M.E., Green, T.R.G., and Guest, D.J., "Scope Marking in Computer Conditionals: A Psychological Evaluation." International Journal of Man-Machine Studies, 1977. 9: pp. 107--118.
• 52: Smith, D.C., Pygmalion: A Computer Program to Model and Stimulate Creative Thought. 1977, Basel, Stuttgart: Birkhauser Verlag. PhD Thesis, Stanford University Computer Science Department, 1975.
• 53: David Canfield Smith , Allen Cypher , Jim Spohrer, KidSim: programming agents without a programming language, Communications of the ACM, v.37 n.7, p.54-67, July 1994 [doi>10.1145/176789.176795]
• 54: Elliot Soloway , Mark Guzdial , Kenneth E. Hay, Learner-centered design: the challenge for HCI in the 21st century, interactions, v.1 n.2, p.36-48, April 1994 [doi>10.1145/174809.174813]
• 55: Elliot Soloway , Shari L. Jackson , Jonathan Klein , Chris Quintana , James Reed , Jeff Spitulnik , Steven J. Stratford , Scott Studer , Jim Eng , Nancy Scala, Learning theory in practice: case studies of learner-centered design, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems: common ground, p.189-196, April 13-18, 1996, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada [doi>10.1145/238386.238476]
• 56: E. Soloway , James C. Spohrer, Studying the Novice Programmer, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., Mahwah, NJ, 1988
• 57: Tim Teitelbaum , Thomas Reps, The Cornell program synthesizer: a syntax-directed programming environment, Communications of the ACM, v.24 n.9, p.563-573, Sept. 1981 [doi>10.1145/358746.358755]
• 58: Susan Wiedenbeck, Facilitators and Inhibitors of End-User Development by Teachers in a School Environment, Proceedings of the 2005 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing (VL/HCC'05), p.215-222, September 20-24, 2005 [doi>10.1109/VLHCC.2005.36]
• 59: Wulf, V., Paterno, F., and Lieberman, H., eds. End User Development. 2006, Kluwer Academic Publishers.

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  D. Software
  D.3 PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES
      D.3.2 Language Classifications

Additional Classification:
  D. Software
  D.2 SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
      D.2.5 Testing and Debugging
      D.2.6 Programming Environments

  I. Computing Methodologies
  I.3 COMPUTER GRAPHICS
      I.3.6 Methodology and Techniques
          Subjects: Languages

Keywords:
empirical studies of programmers (ESP), end-user software engineering, natural programming, programming by demonstration, programming by example, psychology of programming, visual programming