On a laboratory for the study of automating programming

  • Authors:

  • T. E. Cheatham, Jr.;Ben Wegbreit

  • Affiliations:

  • Harvard Center For Research in Computing Technology, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts;Harvard Center For Research in Computing Technology, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of ACM conference on Proving assertions about programs
  • Year:
  • 1972

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Abstract

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”. It is the purpose of this note to provide an overview of the project currently under way at Harvard's Center for Research in Computing Technology, directed toward the implementation of a laboratory for the study of programming automation techniques. A more detailed discussion of our approach is provided in [1]. In the four sections which follow we will discuss briefly our view of the use of a program automation laboratory, the basis for and basic components of the facility currently being implemented, and finally, suggest that there are a variety of research areas which are strongly related to the question of automating programming in which the laboratory might be employed as a research tool.