Pegasus: first steps toward a naturalistic programming language

  • Authors:
  • Roman Knöll;Mira Mezini

  • Affiliations:
  • Darmstadt University of Technology;Darmstadt University of Technology

  • Venue:
  • Companion to the 21st ACM SIGPLAN symposium on Object-oriented programming systems, languages, and applications
  • Year:
  • 2006

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Abstract

In this article a new programming paradigm is discussed: naturalistic programming. Naturalistic Programming means writing computer programs with the help of natural language.The authors are convinced that contemporary programming techniques have reached a level where only a fundamental change of paradigm can develop them any further.Introducing, philosophical and epistemological issues related to programming and human thinking are discussed.After that, the programming language Pegasus is presented. It has been developed as a scientific prototype of a naturalistic programming language at the Darmstadt University of Technology.Pegasus can read natural language and create executable program files from that. In addition to that, Pegasus can automatically translate programs between different natural languages, by the time of writing: German and English.Subsequently, an overview on related work is given, followed by remarks on the advantages and disadvantages of naturalistic programming in general and Pegasus in particular.Finally, an outlook on future research concludes.