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MIT's Metaphor For Software Programming

This is the tool I was referring to in one of my responses to the "New Language Ideas" thread... Check it out and let me know what you guys think...

http://nwc.compliancepipeline.com/sh...0911755&pgno=2

Quote:

Software coding and programming won't disappear from the IT industry any time soon, but they certainly could become simpler. One step in that direction is a natural-language type project under way at the MIT Media Laboratory.

The newly designed intelligent user interface, called Metafor, visualizes a person's typed stories as software code. As the person types, the system continuously updates a version of the narrative into code that will then have to be executed. While it can't yet convert English to a fully specified code, the researchers say, Metafor can make programming easier and more intuitive.

Research assistant Hugo Liu started working on the project with professor Henry Lieberman a year and a half ago at MIT. "Metafor is a first pass" at what they're trying to do, Liu says. Previous natural-language programming used conventions, key words, and language structures that were difficult to develop, he says. "We want to remove that and move to plain English language" programming.

While no commercial applications are planned yet, Liu says there are many potential uses. For example, he sees Metafor as a useful "bridge" between business teams�who need particular requirements and specs�and software engineers who can map those English-written specs into precise code. Liu also hopes that these easy-to-use interfaces "can empower more people to program," even if it's their smart household appliances, such as alarm clocks and VCRs. "It's a very good way to learn programming," he says. The researchers are also testing applications in education and gaming. "Humans won't go out of the loop for programming," he says, but Metafor could help demystify programming for nonprogrammers.

I find that very interesting... and not a bad idea to serve as a link between the person who describes the project and the person who actually codes the project, I can think of a few circumstances where that may have clairfied and made life easier for me... since most client's do not usually know what they are talking about ;)

The purpose of this sort of thing is to "hook up" two very different things. The human's problem space is very different from today's computer's solution space. One is highly perceptual and the other is highly procedural. Object-oriented design (which has been around thousands of years, despite what the software high-priests maintain) is one attempt to map one to the other with whatever layer of abstraction is necessary. "Languages" like the one mentioned are another.

Software OOP became "hot" in the early nineties. The cost of the resources to do it well was so high that there wasn't a suitable return on investment. Consequently, it languished. Unfortunately, such delays left its development and methodology pretty much in the hands of academics and other non-real-world types. The resulting mess is a conglomeration of fiats and dictums and procedures that don't often hold up to rational scrutiny.

The blurb in my signature is all that's left of an abortive attempt at a tutorial on OOP, using C++. It's very difficult (for me) to write such a tutorial that goes beyond the mere syntactical requirements of using classes and so forth. It's a different way of thinking that I find easier to do than to convey.