END USER PROGRAMMING ENVIRONMENTS : INTERACTIVE PROGRAMMING-ON-EXAMPLE IN CAD PARAMETRIC DESIGN

Abstract

In recent years, the number of computer end-users who do not know programming has increased rapidly. This new phenomenon has spurred a great deal of research about program design using very different approaches from the usual methods, which, as is well known, are very difficult to learn [1]. This research has touched on many programming fields : physical system simulation [2], graphical interface tailoring [3] and "macros" implementation [4] [5], data base access [6], lessons programming in Computer Aided Teaching [1] ... B.A. Myers [7] suggests a useful taxonomy for classifying these different systems. The three orthogonal criteria he uses define eight categories. A system is much more suitable for end-user programming when it is : - interactive, i.e. able to quickly echo the effect of one step of program designing, - graphic, or visual, i.e. allowing program design by commands working (at least) on a bi-dimensional environment, - associated with a running example, i.e. program designing uses values representing a running example of the program. The goal of this paper is twofold. On the one hand, it looks at a domain, rarely quoted in synthetic reviews [6] [7] [4], where these techniques are often used efficiently, and where end-user programming goes beyond the experimental phase : we are referring to parametric-design in Computer Aided Design (CAD). On the other hand, it presents a graphical interactive programming-on-examples system, named LIKE, which removes most of the problems pointed out by recent studies [7] [5].