We believe concreteness, direct manipulation and responsiveness in a visual
programming language increase its usefulness. However, these characteristics present a
challenge in generalizing programs for reuse, especially when concrete examples are used
as one way of achieving concreteness. In this thesis, we present a technique to solve this
problem by deriving generality automatically through the analysis of logical relationships
among concrete program entities from the perspective of a particular computational goal.
Use of this technique allows a fully general form-based program with reusable abstractions
to be derived from one that was specified in terms of concrete examples and direct
manipulation.
Also addressed in this thesis is how to statically represent the generalized programs.
In general, we address how to design better static representations. A weakness of many
interactive visual programming languages is their static representations. Lack of an
adequate static representation places a heavy cognitive burden on a VPL's programmers,
because they must remember potentially long dynamic sequences of screen displays in
order to understand a previously-written program. However, although this problem is
widely acknowledged, research on how to design better static representations for interactive
VPLs is still in its infancy.
Building upon the cognitive dimensions developed for programming languages by
cognitive psychologists Green and others, we have developed a set of concrete benchmarks
for VPL designers to use when designing new static representations. These benchmarks
provide design-time information that can be used to improve a VPL's static representation. / Graduation date: 1997
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ORGSU/oai:ir.library.oregonstate.edu:1957/34379 |
| Date | 04 November 1996 |
| Creators | Yang, Sherry |
| Contributors | Burnett, Margaret M. |
| Source Sets | Oregon State University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis/Dissertation |
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