Exploiting Domain-Specific Structures For End-User Programming Support Tools

Abstract

In previous work we have tried to transfer ideas that have been successful in
general-purpose programming languages and mainstream software engineering into
the realm of spreadsheets, which is one important example of an end-user
programming environment.

More specifically, we have addressed the questions of how to employ the
concepts of type checking, program generation and maintenance, and testing in
spreadsheets. While the primary objective of our work has been to offer
improvements for end-user productivity, we have tried to follow two
particular principles to guide our research.

(1) Keep the number of new concepts to be learned by end users at a minimum.

(2) Exploit as much as possible information offered by the internal
structure of spreadsheets.

In this short paper we will illustrate our research approach with several examples.