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

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.