Programming by example: novice programming comes of age

first commercial product based on PBD technology—Stagecast Creator, introduced in March 1999—enabling even children to create their own interactive stories, games, and simulations. Here, we describe this approach, offer independent evidence that it works for novices, and discuss why it works when other approaches haven’t and, more important, can’t. The computer is the most powerful tool ever devised for processing information, promising to make people’s lives richer (in several senses). But much of this potential is unrealized. Today, the only way most people are able to interact with computers is through programs or applications written by other people. This limited interaction represents a myopic and procrustean view of computers—like Alice looking at the garden in Wonderland through a keyhole. Until nonprogrammers can program computers themselves, they’ll be able to exploit only a fraction of a computer’s power. The limits of conventional interaction has