IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages

Seattle, Washington
September 10-14, 2000

Advance Program

Tutorial T4 -	Programming by Example Techniques
	Brad A. Myers (Carnegie Mellon University, USA)

Wednesday, September 13, 3:30 PM

Synopsis

This tutorial covers the broad range of techniques used in programming systems that use "Programming By Example (PBE)." Sometimes called "Programming By Demonstration" or "Demonstrational Interfaces", this refers to systems that allow the user to give examples of the desired behaviors and contents, and the system generalizes from those examples so the result will work in different contexts. Some PBE systems use sophisticated artificial intelligence techniques to generalize, others use simple rule-based heuristics, and still others require the user to perform the generalization. Applications of PBE techniques have been to general-purpose programming, programming of user interfaces, defining animations, creating macros or scripts for text editing, designing business charts, desktop file manipulation, hypertext browsing, programming for kids, etc. The tutorial will include many demonstrations and videos of research and commercial uses of programming-by-example techniques.

Who can benefit from this tutorial

This tutorial is primarily aimed at researchers and students interested in PBE techniques. No prior experience with PBE is required.

About the speaker

Brad Myers is a Senior Research Scientist in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute in the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University, where he is the principal investigator for various projects, including Demonstrational Interfaces, User Interface Software, Natural Programming, and the Pebbles Palm Pilot Project. He and his students have created about a dozen systems that use programming-by-example techniques.

He is the author or editor of over 190 publications, including "Creating User Interfaces by Demonstration" and "Languages for Developing User Interfaces," and he is on the editorial board of five journals, including the Journal of Visual Languages and Computing. His research interests include User Interface Development Systems, user interfaces, Programming by Example, programming languages for kids, Visual Programming, interaction techniques, window management, and programming environments. He belongs to SIGCHI, ACM, IEEE Computer Society, IEEE, and Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility. He will also be a keynote speaker for VL'2000.

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