Automatic Programming Robert Elschlager and Jorge Phillips Handbook of Artificial Intelligence

Theorem Proving Vision Robotics Information Processing Psychology Learning and Inductive Inference Planning and Related Problem-solving Techniques Automatic Programming (AP) Is a new, dynamic, and not precisely defined area of artificial intelligence. This overview discusses the definitions, history, motivating forces and goals of automatic programming and includes a brief description of the basic characteristics and central issues of AP systems. The article begins with a section discussing the various possible definitions of automatic programming, the background in which it has achieved existence, as well as some of its general motivating forces and goals. The next section describes four characteristics of all AP systems: the method by which a user of such a system specifies or describes the desired program, the target language in which the system writes the program, the problem or application area to which the system is addressed, and the approach or operational method employed by the system. Next, a section discusses four basic issues, one or more of which concern all AP systems: the representation and processing of partial or incomplete information; the transformation of structures, and especially the transformation of program descriptions into other descriptions (in this chapter, the term program description includes the user's specification of the desired program, any Internal representations of the progrrm, as well as the target language implementation); the efficiency of the target language Imp,ementation; and the system's capabilities for aiding in the understanding of the program.