Towards a Programmer's Apprentice (Again)

Programmers are loathe to interrupt their workflow to document their design rationale, leading to frequent errors when software is modified—often much later and by different programmers. A Programmer’s Assistant could interact with the programmer to capture and preserve design rationale, in a natural way that would make rationale capture “cost less than it’s worth”, and could also detect common flaws in program design. Such a programmer’s assistant was not practical when it was first proposed decades ago, but advances over the years make now the time to revisit the concept, as our prototype shows. This work was supported by the Center for Brains, Minds and Machines (CBMM), funded by NSF STC award CCF - 1231216. 

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2015
• Where: AAAI
• Authors: Howard Elliot Shrobe, Boris Katz, Randall Davis
• Keywords: AAAI 2015, Intelligent Agents