Graphical rewrite rule analogies: avoiding the inherit or copy and paste reuse dilemma

A scalable method for deductive generalization in the spreadsheet paradigm

“…In ToonTalk [Kahn 1996] and in Topaz [Myers 1998], the user explicitly specifies the generalization parameters. In AgentSheets [Perrone and Repenning 1998;Repenning 1995], the user specifies any desired generalizations via analogies ("Cars move on roads like trains move on tracks"). In KidSim/Cocoa/Stagecast [Cypher and Smith 1995;Heger et al 1998], users can generalize a graphical rule they have demonstrated by stating that it should abstract beyond the specific object type to, for example, all instances of a set of types.…”

“…Many mechanisms to support automatic generalization of concrete programs have been devised for graphical programming languages [Ambler and Hsia 1993;Frank and Foley 1994;Kahn 1996;Kurlander and Feiner 1992;Lieberman 1993;McDaniel and Myers 1999;Myers 1993Myers , 1998Olsen 1996;Perrone and Repenning 1998;Repenning 1995;Sassin 1994;Smith 1975;Sugiura and Koseki 1996;Vander Zanden and Myers 1995;Wolber 1997]. Some of these use inference, 1 and some require the user to explicitly provide the generalized meaning.…”

Teachers as simulation programmers

“…The latter have the advantage of simplicity, in that the "real world" usage context has been removed; the agents are also named directly for the behavior they exemplify. The developers of Agentsheets have argued that users will not want to work with abstract agents [8], but our prior work on example-based reuse in Smalltalk indicated that the concrete details of realistic usage examples often get in the way [19].…”

“…Perrone and Repenning argue that end-users do not want to worry about abstract classes that might be specialized to create the agents they need [8]. Instead they propose an analogy mechanism, in which a user goes through a dialog of the sort "a <car> on a <road> is like a <train> on a <track>", where the train already has rules to run along a track, and the car is given analogous rules for running on the road.…”

“…Our interactions with teachers in this project have made two things very clear: they have little time to spend on learning new technology, and they are unlikely to develop computer-based materials from scratch, preferring instead to adapt content built by others or by themselves in previous efforts. We took this as a strong requirement to provide minimalist self-study instruction [1], and to explore the possibilities for reuse within the simulation environment [8].…”