Spreadsheet languages, which include commercial spreadsheets and various research systems, have proven to be flexible tools in many settings. Research shows, however, that spreadsheets often contain faults. This thesis presents an integrated testing and fault localization methodology for spreadsheets. This methodology allows spreadsheet developers to engage in modeless development, testing...
Forms/3 is a declarative visual programming language that aims to provide general purpose programming language capabilities in a simple, form-based approach. This report provides an example-driven introduction to programming in Forms/3.
A human-centric issue that has not been considered in
the design of end-user programming environments is
whether gender differences exist that are important to the
design of these environments. Ignoring this issue would
miss the opportunity of enhancing the effectiveness of
end-user programmers by incorporating appropriate
mechanisms to support gender-associated...
This paper focuses on mining the strategies of problem solving software users by observing their actions. Our application domain is an HCI study aimed at discovering general strategies employed by software users and understanding how such strategies relate to gender and success. We cast this problem as a sequential pattern...
End users develop more software than any other group of programmers, using software authoring devices such as email filtering editors, by-demonstration macro builders, and spreadsheet environments. Despite this, there has been only a little research on finding ways to help these programmers with the dependability of the software they create....
Although spreadsheets can be argued to be the most widely-used end-user programming languages today, they are very limited compared to other programming languages, supporting only a few built-in types and offering only primitive support for code reuse. The inheritance mechanisms of object-oriented programming might seem to offer help for the...
Although spreadsheets can be argued to be the most widely-used visual programming languages (VPLs) today, most are very limited compared to other VPLs, supporting only p few built-in types and offering only primitive support for code reuse. The inheritance mechanisms of object-oriented programming might seem to offer help for the...
How can rigorous forms of testing be supported in a way that is both compatible with the visual aspect of visual programming languages, and usable by the audiences using those languages -- even when the audience has no background in software engineering? Visual programs are likely to contain at least...
This paper reports on an empirical study involving end users that addresses the question of whether it is possible to provide the benefits of formal testing within the informal spreadsheet paradigm. We have developed a "What You See Is What You Test" (WYSIWYT) methodology that brings the benefits of formal...
Although there have been a number of studies of
end-user software development tasks, few of them have
considered gender issues for real end-user developers
in real-world environments for end-user programming.
In order to be trusted, the results of such laboratory
studies must always be re-evaluated with fewer controls,
more closely...