A 15 Year Perspective on Automatic Programming

Abstract

Automatic programming consists not only of an automatic compiler, but also some means of acquiring the high-level specification to be compiled, some means of determining that it is the intended specification, and some (interactive) means of translating this high-level specification into a lower-level one which can be automatically compiled. We have been working on this extended automatic programming problem for nearly 15 years, and this paper presents our perspective and approach to this problem and justifies it in terms of our successes and failures. Much of our recent work centers on an operational testbed incorporating usable aspects of this technology. This testbed is being used as a prototyping vehicle for our own research and will soon be released to the research community as a framework for development and evolution of Common Lisp systems. Copyright © 1985 by The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc.