Abstract: “Programmers are loathe to interrupt their workflow to document their design rationale, leading to frequent errors when software is modified—often much later and by different programmers. A Programmer’s Assistant could interact with the programmer to capture and preserve design rationale, in a natural way that would make rationale capture “cost less than it’s worth”, and could also detect common flaws in program design. Such a programmer’s assistant was not practical when it was first proposed decades ago, but advances over the years make now the time to revisit the concept, as our prototype shows.”

Nick’s note: The Programmer’s Apprentice project, described here, was a famous attempt by MIT to automate programming by understanding how experts did it.