Active and passive strategies in dialogue program generation

Abstract

An application of dialogue systems for developing computer programs is described and discussed in this paper. The concept of generating program source code by means of a dialogue involves combining strategies with system and user initiative. The strategy with system initiative safely navigates the user, whereas the strategy with user initiative enables a quick and effective creation of the desired constructions of the source code and collaboration with the system using obtained knowledge to increase the effectiveness of the dialogue. The described system, which was initially developed for visually impaired users, can also be used by novice programmers as a tool for learning programming languages.