Programming Not Only by Example
Hila Peleg, Sharon Shoham, Eran Yahav

TL;DR
This paper introduces a granular interaction model for program synthesis, allowing users to provide detailed feedback on specific parts of generated code, which improves efficiency and user preference over example-based methods.
Contribution
The authors propose a novel interaction approach combining debug information and granular feedback, enhancing user control and efficiency in program synthesis.
Findings
Participants preferred granular feedback over examples.
Granular feedback enabled faster user responses.
The approach improved understanding and refinement of synthesized programs.
Abstract
In recent years, there has been tremendous progress in automated synthesis techniques that are able to automatically generate code based on some intent expressed by the programmer. A major challenge for the adoption of synthesis remains in having the programmer communicate their intent. When the expressed intent is coarse-grained (for example, restriction on the expected type of an expression), the synthesizer often produces a long list of results for the programmer to choose from, shifting the heavy-lifting to the user. An alternative approach, successfully used in end-user synthesis is programming by example (PBE), where the user leverages examples to interactively and iteratively refine the intent. However, using only examples is not expressive enough for programmers, who can observe the generated program and refine the intent by directly relating to parts of the generated program.…
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Taxonomy
TopicsSoftware Engineering Research · Parallel Computing and Optimization Techniques · Software System Performance and Reliability
