Semi-Automated Programming

David A Musick (davidmusick@juno.com)
Tue, 13 Jan 1998 11:12:26 -0500

I just read an article in 'The New York Times' (on-line edition) that
said there is a serious shortage of computer programmers in the world,
that not enough people are going into computer science to keep up with
the escalating demand for computer programmers. This is good for the
computer programmers, since their salaries tend to keep rising, but it is
not so good for the development of information technologies since the
less people there are advancing those technologies, the more slowly they
will advance.

What I was thinking would be a high priority for software development
companies is a form of semi-automated programming software. Basically,
this would be a very high-level programming language which could help the
programmer do in little time what previously took hours of coding. Since
it isn't likely that we'll see a significantly higher percentage of
people becoming computer programmers, what we need are tools to help
those programmers be much more productive with their time. Also, tools
like these will likely get rid of much of the more boring aspects of
computer programming, which are boring because they require very little
thought and could be better done by a computer.

I know a lot of you on this list are computer programmers; do any of you
know about developments in very high level programming languages?

David Musick (DavidMusick@juno.com)

- Continual improvement is the highest good.