β Scribed by JON WHITTLE; ANDREW CUMMING
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
Functional programming presents new challenges in the design of programming environments. In a strongly typed functional language, such as ML, much conventional debugging of runtime errors is replaced by dealing with compile-time error reports. On the other hand, the cleanness of functional programming opens up new possibilities for incorporating sophisticated correctness-checking techniques into such environments. C 7 NΒΉHIA is a novel editor for ML that both addresses the challenges and explores the possibilities. It uses an underlying proof system as a framework for automatically checking for semantic errors such as non-termination. In addition, C 7 NΒΉHIA embodies the idea of programming by analogy * whereby users write programs by applying abstract transformations to existing programs. This paper investigates C 7 NΒΉHIA's potential as a novice ML programming environment. We report on two studies in which it was found that students using C 7 NΒΉHIA commit fewer errors and correct errors more quickly than when using a compiler/text editor approach.
2000 Academic Press
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