Autocoding project proposal.

[Timothy Rue]

On 26-Jan-02 19:38:38 David Masterson <dmaster at synopsys.com> wrote:
>>>>>> Jonathan Hogg writes:

>> AppleScript (to continue my example) has a few basic commands (OK,
>> it also has a lot that aren't basic, but run with me...). For
>> instance (not tested, don't bother ratting on me if I get them
>> wrong):

>>     * Selecting an application:

>>         tell application "Finder" to ...

>>     * Getting a thing from an application:

>>         ... get the startup disk

>>     * Identifying a thing in terms of a container:

>>         ... get the folder "Documents" of the startup disk

>>     * Sending a command:

>>         ... move the folder "Documents" of the startup disk to the trash

>> These are simple concepts that most people can quickly grasp, but
>> the devil is in the details. The hard thing is mapping the things
>> that the application works with into terms that the user can
>> understand. Things such as "folder", "trash", etc.

>Whoa!  Shades of COBOL...

>> Apple manage this by asking programmers to write a dictionary for
>> their application and to document it. The dictionary and the
>> documentation are built into the application itself, and any user
>> can point the Script Editor (an application that comes with every
>> Mac) at an application and ask for this documentation. The Script
>> Editor application uses the application supplied dictionary to check
>> that the commands entered by the user are legal.

>Whoa!  Shades of Emacs...

There have been over 3000 programming language created in a period of
around 50 years. That's alot more than human recorded language in all of
mans history.

Certainly by now we have enough to look at and determine what the general
programming concepts are, as well as knowing such general concepts are by
far much less in number than languages they are expressed in.

As such, "Whoa@ Shades of...." can be filling in with most any programming
language.

But no matter what, you still have to:

start/stop things

keep track of where you are in doing things

Get input

determine where you are getting input from

determine wherre you are sending output to

do things one step at a time

look up the meaning of things

look up the identy of things

Reduce you look up via constraints



WHOA! SHADES OF EVERYTHING!!!!!!



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