A Survey and a Categorization Scheme of Automatic Programming Systems

Automatic Programming (AP) systems have been used in a great variety of ways since the early days of software engineering. They have been used in AI related research approaches with the aim to generate computer programs from informal, incomplete, natural language-like specifications as well as in more pragmatic approaches related to 4th level languages. Terms such as "application generator", "transformational system", "code synthesizer", "generative software development" were used for naming various approaches to AP. This paper presents a categorization scheme for AP systems. In this categorization scheme, a clear distinction is made between the AI related, hard AP- and soft AP systems. After that, a broad range of AP systems as well as their position in the categorization scheme is presented. Finally we discuss the relation between AP and software reuse.

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