SHF: Small: A Mechanism for Extending A Programming Language with Interactive Syntax

SHF：小型：一种用交互式语法扩展编程语言的机制

基本信息

批准号：
2007686
负责人：
Matthias Felleisen
金额：
$ 44.99万
依托单位：
Northeastern University
依托单位国家：
美国
项目类别：
Standard Grant
财政年份：
2020
资助国家：
美国
起止时间：
2020-07-01 至 2024-06-30
项目状态：
已结题

来源：
https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2007686&HistoricalAwards=false
关键词：
SHF Small Mechanism Extending Programming

项目摘要

Software developers write programs as linear text. At the moment, this way of programming is the dominant way of instructing computers in industry. While the computer does not care in which format instructions are entered, the format greatly matters to the developer who must read a program many months later to understand and improve the code. The problem is that a good amount of this linear program text describes geometric relationships among different pieces of the program's problem domain, say a piece of a map or a tabular arrangement of information. No effort on the part of a software developer can ever express such relationships in a textual way that makes them easy to decipher. The goal of this project is to demonstrate that form of textual-visual programming will greatly improve the communication between developers across time.The project develops a mechanism for supplementing textual programming languages with visual and interactive elements: miniature graphical user interfaces (GUIs). Using this mechanism, developers can create mini GUIs for specific problem domains such as, for example, two-dimension tables of conditional actions. Other developers add instances of these mini-GUIs to their code and interact with them to enter specific details. When the code is supposed to be run, the translator collaborates with these visual elements to render them as ordinary instructions. When the code is to be read, the visual nature expresses the geometric relationships much more directly than linear text. The project team will evaluate the mechanism across several dozen application areas.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

软件开发人员将程序写为线性文本。目前，这种编程方式是指导工业计算机的主要方式。虽然计算机不在乎输入哪种格式说明，但格式对开发人员来说非常重要，后者在数月后必须阅读程序以理解和改进代码。问题在于，大量线性程序文本描述了程序问题域的不同部分之间的几何关系，例如地图或表格的信息排列。软件开发人员的任何努力都无法以文本方式表达这种关系，从而使它们易于破译。该项目的目的是证明文本 - 视觉编程的形式将大大改善开发人员之间的沟通。该项目开发了一种用视觉和互动元素补充文本编程语言的机制：微型图形用户界面（GUIS）。使用这种机制，开发人员可以为特定问题域创建迷你GUI，例如，例如有条件操作的二维表。其他开发人员将这些迷你GUI的实例添加到其代码中，并与他们进行交互以输入特定的详细信息。当应该运行代码时，翻译人员将与这些视觉元素合作，以将它们作为普通说明进行渲染。当要读取代码时，视觉性质比线性文本更直接地表达几何关系。该项目团队将评估几十个应用领域的机制。该奖项反映了NSF的法定任务，并被认为是值得通过基金会的知识分子优点和更广泛影响的评论标准来评估值得支持的。