NYI award: visual programming languages

Spreadsheet systems are examples of programming languages that are at least partly visual. An advantage of studying spreadsheet systems from a programming language perspective is that there is overwhelming evidence that they are actually usable for programming by end users. We have developed "similarity inheritance" [4], a new approach to inheritance that is suitable for seamless integration into spreadsheet-like visual languages. The approach shows that bringing inheritance functionality to the spreadsheet paradigm can be done using the widely-understood idea of copy/paste. As a followup to this work, we have started working on a static type inference system that would support similarity inheritance, whose reasoning mechanisms are targeted at supporting enduser programmers who have no formal training in types.

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[2]  Larry Carter,et al.  Memory hierarchy considerations for fast transpose and bit-reversals , 1999, Proceedings Fifth International Symposium on High-Performance Computer Architecture.

[3]  Jonathan J. Cadiz,et al.  Does continuous visual feedback aid debugging in direct-manipulation programming systems? , 1997, CHI.

[4]  Margaret M. Burnett,et al.  Steering programs via time travel , 1996, Proceedings 1996 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages.

[5]  Larry Carter,et al.  Localizing non-affine array references , 1999, 1999 International Conference on Parallel Architectures and Compilation Techniques (Cat. No.PR00425).

[6]  Margaret M. Burnett,et al.  From concrete forms to generalized abstractions through perspective-oriented analysis of logical relationships , 1994, Proceedings of 1994 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages.

[7]  Margaret M. Burnett,et al.  Graphical definitions: expanding spreadsheet languages through direct manipulation and gestures , 1998, TCHI.

[8]  Larry Carter,et al.  Schedule-independent storage mapping for loops , 1998, ASPLOS VIII.

[9]  Margaret M. Burnett,et al.  Similarity inheritance: a new model of inheritance for spreadsheet VPLs , 1998, Proceedings. 1998 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages (Cat. No.98TB100254).