Exploratory Program Synthesis

Projektinformationen

EXPLOSYN

ID Finanzhilfevereinbarung: 101117232

DOI

10.3030/101117232

EK-Unterschriftsdatum 3 November 2023

Startdatum 1 Dezember 2023

Enddatum 30 November 2028

Finanziert unter

• European Research Council (ERC)

Gesamtkosten

€ 1 500 000,00

EU-Beitrag

€ 1 500 000,00

Koordiniert durch

TECHNION - ISRAEL INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
Israel

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - EXPLOSYN (Exploratory Program Synthesis)

Berichtszeitraum: 2023-12-01 bis 2026-05-31

Zusammenfassung vom Kontext und den Gesamtzielen des Projekts

Program synthesis generates code for programmers so they can focus on the problem-solving aspects of their work. This often requires programmers to write a specification for the desired code, but this specification may not exist. Many aspects are initially undecided: implementation details, the division into subtasks, and at times even what the result should be.

This leads programmers to use Exploratory Programming: refining their understanding of the code by writing the code. Our overall goal in this proposed project is to develop synthesis tools
and techniques that can practically support programmers in the course of
their real-world tasks, many of which involve exploratory programming.

To do this, we must overcome three main obstructions in marrying synthesis with exploratory programming, which stem from the chasm between the iterative progression of exploratory programming and the single-step progression of program synthesis.

The expected impact of the EXPLOSYN project is the creating of tools that may be adapted by users, and a better understanding of how exploratory tasks are performed, which in itself can open the door to better tools.

Arbeit, die ab Beginn des Projekts bis zum Ende des durch den Bericht erfassten Berichtszeitraums geleistet wurde, und die wichtigsten bis dahin erzielten Ergebnisse

As planned, we have investigated extending several known exploratory workflows with program synthesis. We examined the shortcomings of “debugging into existence”, a development mechanism based on inspection within the debugger and of small-step live PBE, a workflow already synthesis enabled and exploratory by nature.
The insights gained about these workflows allowed us to develop DeSynt, a debugging into existence program synthesizer that overcomes the first-breakpoint gap in the original debugging into existence workflow and ScooPy, a live programming environment to allow iterative work on the same code with small-step PBE. Together these represent WP1of the proposal.

Fortschritte, die über den aktuellen Stand der Technik hinausgehen und voraussichtliche potenzielle Auswirkungen (einschließlich der bis dato erzielten sozioökonomischen Auswirkungen und weiter gefassten gesellschaftlichen Auswirkungen des Projekts)

DeSynt (Debugging into Existence with Program Synthesis) and its trigerless completions created an unexpected interaction model that sits in a portion of the design space previously thought to be necessarily empty. ScooPy advances the state of the art of Live Programming by Examples and takes Live Programming into an intersection with the field of software testing.