Knowledge Based Programming: An Experiment in Selecting a Data Type PDF

Keywords

programming, research, knowledge programming

Abstract

The paper gives a short overview of the area of knowledge based programming. Research direction toward an intelligent support to software development is identified as an important aim. The paper concentrates on an original work in the area of knowledge based programming. The work reported in the paper relates to a tool to assist trainee programmers. A knowledge base on programming was built for a special area of programming expertise related to selecting a data type in the process of program formation. Properties of the knowledge base are discussed and its representation is devised. Description of one experiment is given in detail, showing user-system interaction. In the experiment, which relates to processing of data under a specific strategy, the user describes the relevant properties of the problem (such as whether the data elements will be processed more than once, whether their number can be determined in advance) and the system tries to infer what data type(s) would be appropriate to represent data with such properties. This can be regarded as an advisor to the user. The results show that the system is able to offer qualified advice. This is also an important consideration in the process of learning programming