Open Standard Layered Architecture Tools

This diagram examines my thinking for 2009-10. This reflects the need to build up from layers of simpler generic information representation and tools that are generic. For representation of information this is more high level and more customised, less generic from right to left. For modelling this is more high level and less generic from bottom to top. Greater use of computer to human translation increases the modelling capabilities. Good interoperability improves the ease of translation, and the layering of simpler information formats with more complex and less generic layers built on top.

Thus it is possible to build on layers of generic solutions from bottom right, and get as far as possible towards the top left, building re-usable solutions before at some point building a final layer of a more customised less generic solution.

This approach maximises re-use and improves maintenance.

Semantic Web Applications

In order to increase the use of Semantic Web technologies it is necessary to create applications that make use of the Semantic Web for practical applications. Enabling Modelling with Semantic Web technologies could encourage domain experts to fill ontologies with useful information, so generating more benefit from their use.

The use of Semantic Web languages as information representation and even as programming languages would assist greatly with interoperability as these modelling languages are standardised for use in a wide range of computer systems.

Research can bring together End-User Programming, Modelling and the Semantic Web approaches, so the shaded area is examined.

An important area of research is a technique for end-user programming, that of allowing visual modelling of information. This corresponds to the type of work normally undertaken using spreadsheets. This research involves using Semantic Web technologies to enable end-user programming. The technology is applicable to any problem that involves user interaction, calculation, and modelling so it can be applied to a wider range of tasks and subject areas.

A methodology that involves structuring of information through Ontology and Semantic Web techniques and enabling end-user programming through visualisation and interaction aims to achieve effective production of generic models. Horrocks (2002) explains Semantic Web technologies and the use of agents and ontologies, and ontology representation languages. This demonstrates the linked nature of Ontology and Semantic Web research.

Berners-Lee and Fischetti (1999) sum up the advantage of a Semantic Web program over programs in other languages. They write, "The advantage of putting the rules in RDF is that in doing so, all the reasoning is exposed, whereas a program is a black box: you don't see what happens inside it." They discuss the use of Semantic Web languages as programming languages and explain the benefits declaring "The Semantic Web, like the Web already, will make many things previously impossible just obvious. Visual Semantic Web programming is one of those obvious things".

Berners-Lee et al. (2006) explain the importance of visualisation for navigation of information "Despite excitement about the Semantic Web, most of the world's data are locked in large data stores and are not published as an open Web of inter-referring resources. As a result, the reuse of information has been limited. Substantial research challenges arise in changing this situation: how to effectively query an unbounded Web of linked information repositories, how to align and map between different data models, and how to visualise and navigate the huge connected graph of information that results." The use of Semantic Web languages as programming languages would assist greatly with interoperability as these languages are standardised for use in a wide range of computer systems

The main advantage of open standard representation of information provided by the Semantic Web is that information can be transferred from one application to another. Additionally it provides a layered architecture that allows for a stepped translation from users to computer and back for conveying results of a modelling run. The program transformation approach argued for by Lieberman (2007) can be used to translate from a domain expert End-User Programmer abstraction to models represented by Semantic Web languages, ontologies and code.

Use of Semantic Web technologies is a means for open standard representation of collaborative models, transformation into different representations as required, and for provision of a high-level interface as a tool for model visualisation and system creation. Structuring of information through Ontology and Semantic Web techniques and enabling End-User Programming through visualisation and interaction can achieve effective production of generic models. Semantic Web technologies could assist greatly with Web based Simulation and Modelling. Kuljis and Paul (2001) evaluate progress in the field of web simulation. They argue the need for web-based simulations to be focussed on solving real-world problems in order to be successful. Miller and Baramidze (2005) establish that for a "simulation study that includes model building, scenario creation, model execution, output analysis and saving/interpreting results. Ontologies can be useful during all of these phases." Model-Driven Programming and the Semantic Web are explained by Frankel et al. (2004).

Research in the use and visualisation of Semantic Web information can provide the tools that end-user programmers have been lacking until recently, and these tools can be used for modelling. Crapo et al. (2002) assert the need for a methodology for creation of systems to enable more collaborative approaches to modelling by domain expert end-users, and that this combined with visualisation would allow engineers to model problems accurately.

Many organisations produce text based reports from their IT systems. But text based reports do not always show information well enough for good decision making. Automated conversion of these reports into Semantic Web languages could assist greatly with this. So a translation process is required and can be implemented as part of an overall User-Driven Modelling/Programming Approach. Once reports are converted to a standardised representation, hierarchical information can be represented as clickable trees and numerical representation as charts. This makes it possible to customise outputs from existing IT systems and so allows an improvement in readability of information without major changes to the way it's produced. This could provide a large gain at little cost.

References

Berners-Lee, T., Fischetti, M., 1999. Weaving the Web. Harper San Francisco; Paperback: ISBN:006251587X

Berners-Lee, T., Hall, W., Hendler, J., Shadbolt, N., Weitzner, D. J., 2006. Creating a Science of the Web. Science 11 August 2006:Vol. 313. no. 5788, pp. 769 - 771.

Crapo, A. W., Waisel, L. B., Wallace, W. A., Willemain, T. R., 2002. Visualization and Modelling for Intelligent Systems. In: C. T. Leondes, ed. Intelligent Systems: Technology and Applications, Volume I Implementation Techniques, 2002 pp 53-85.

Frankel, D., Hayes, P., Kendall, E., McGuinness, D., 2004. The Model Driven Semantic Web. In: 1st International Workshop on the Model-Driven Semantic Web (MDSW2004) Enabling Knowledge Representation and MDA® Technologies to Work Together.

Horrocks, I., 2002. DAML+OIL: a Reason-able Web Ontology Language. In: proceedings of the Eighth Conference on Extending Database Technology (EDBT 2002) March 24-28 2002, Prague.

Kuljis, J., Paul, R. J., 2001. An appraisal of web-based simulation: whither we wander?. Simulation Practice and Theory, 9, pp 37-54.

Lieberman, H., 2007. End-User Software Engineering Position Paper. End-User Software Engineering Dagstuhl Seminar.

Miller, J. A., Baramidze, G., 2005. Simulation and the Semantic Web. In. Proceedings of the 2005 Winter Simulation Conference.

Further Information on this research is at -

Semantic Web - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/PeterHale/RDF/RDF.htm.

End-User Programming - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/EndUserProgramming.htm.

Modelling - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/Modelling.htm.

Semantic Web Modelling - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/ModellingSemanticWeb.htm.

PhD Objectives - User Driven Modelling

These are my PhD objectives, in order to make it clear what my research is about.

This research will examine creation of models and modelling systems, and how this can be eased so that a wider range of the population can achieve this. It will also identify ways that creation of models and modelling systems is similar to other types of programming, and how the research can be applied more generally. The main users of the system will be engineers; possibilities for wider application will be explored.

The purpose of user driven modelling/programming is to enable non programmers to crate and adjust models in order to maximise the maintenance, extensibility, ease of use, and sharing of information in models and modelling systems. The research will investigate the following areas in order to ease the process of model creation.

Maintenance
Maintenance of models and modelling systems will be improved by:-

* Use of open standards to represent information in a format available to the maximum range of maintainers without being dependant on the computer system or software they use.

* Ensuring the structure of the modelling/programming system and all its related information is visualised clearly.

* Minimising the amount of code necessary to create a model, and structuring the model so that all connections can be seen.

Extensibility
Extensibility will also be improved by the above means; this enables understanding of a model and so allows for easier re-use. A clear structure and visualisation can be edited with fewer worries about unintended consequences (side effects).

Ease of Use
* Maximising accessibility is important to this, use of open standards helps achieve this, together with enabling models to run on software and systems that people are widely familiar with. Ease of use should be facilitated without compromising structure.

Clear structuring and visualisation of information also assists in making a modelling system easier to use.

Sharing of Information
Maintenance, extensibility and ease of use are the key drivers for sharing of information. Achievement of the objectives in these areas would enable collaboration.

Methodology for Achievement of Objectives
Achievement of the above objectives can make possible creation of manageable, maintainable, and flexible models. To enable these objectives, a diagrammatic representation of models will be used as well as a taxonomy based visualisation. This will make it possible for engineers to use an interface that many of them are familiar with. Translation capabilities will be provided to enable better communication between computer systems, and between humans and computer systems. This will allow visualisation of chains of equations which are common in cost modelling. This visualisation will make it easier for people to add and manage information in large models, and identify cost information. A cost modelling example will be used throughout the thesis, but this work is relevant to modelling in general.

Information management and Interaction
This work will be based on information held in an Ontology, accessed using Semantic Web technology. Cost models will be constructed from information chosen by users through an interface that interacts with the user to establish what information is required, how it should be processed, what calculations should be made, and how should it be displayed, e.g. as a diagram or taxonomy.

More Information is available at http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/~phale/.

Systems Enginering and Simulation

The intention of this project is to create a way for non programmers to create software in high level open standards based declarative languages built with Semantic Web technologies. The reasoning behind this is that if Semantic Web languages can represent data, they can also represent programs, as programs are just a specialised kind of data. The non programmer would program with this declarative language by means of a diagrammatic visualisation.

Many people would like to make greater use of computer technology but are hampered by the need to learn programming languages if they are to fully interact with software. Instead they are limited to the use of certain generic features that are provided for them. A further constraint is the cost of software, and for this project we will develop free software and encourage a community of end-user developers, and modellers.

We aim to provide Semantic Web based modelling and simulation tools that are usable and programmable by end-users. This is in order to ease the difficulties involved in translating requirements between software experts and domain experts. Our research will develop, extend, and combine existing research in provision of web page development tools for end-users, meta-programming, and web based modelling and simulation tools. The diagram below explains the research area we intend to explore.

This research will be part of co-ordinated efforts to enable end-user programming for knowledge management (including e-learning), modelling and decision support, and simulation. Therefore the research will concentrate mainly on translation for simulation and enabling non programmers to create web-based simulation systems. This is illustrated in the figure below.

The main research area will be the interface between Meta-Programming, Modelling and Simulation, and Semantic Web Model Creation, shaded in the figure below. This could allow end-users to develop their own Semantic Web based simulation and modelling tools using a graphical visual interface.

A simple illustration of the techniques that can be used to further this research area is a demonstrator we completed for meta-programming of XML (eXtensible Markup Language) based drag and drop trees. Python is used as a translator between the XML representation of the trees and interactive graphical representations of them. This allows open standards platform independent end-user programming. Such techniques could be used with other Semantic Web based information representations based on languages and structures such as XML, RDF (Resource Description Framework), and OWL (Web Ontology Language), and provision of other controls. These could then be used as graphical components of a simulation system made available over the web. This demonstrator furthered the research of Anderson and Krause [1]. Whiteside also used XML based meta programming to allow end user programming of games with Simkin [2]. Semantic languages provide a higher level declarative view of the problem to be modelled.

Standardisation in XML/RDF enables use of declarative rules for web services. Rules play an important role in artificial intelligence, knowledge-based systems, and for intelligent agents. To allow information sharing and reuse, interoperability, and collaboration an ontology centric approach can be used [3]. Ontologies are defined by Gruber in [4], and he also examines how equations and quantities can be represented in an ontology. Extending such work can enable functions and calculations to be represented in OWL and called by a Semantic Web based programming language.

References

[1] Sample code using drag & Drop with a tree - http://lists.wxwidgets.org/archive/wxPython-users/msg11332.html - Drag and Drop contributed by Sam Anderson, reposted by Dirk Krause.

[2] Simkin - http://www.simkin.co.uk/Links.shtml.

[3] COSMOA: An Ontology-Centric Multi-Agent System For Coordinating Medical Responses To Large-Scale Disasters. Bloodsworth, P., Greenwood, S., 2005. AI Communications Vol 18 (3) Agents Applied in Health Care pp 229-240.

[4] Toward Principles for the Design of Ontologies Used for Knowledge Sharing - Gruber T. R. 1993, http://www2.umassd.edu/SWAgents/agentdocs/stanford/onto-design.pdf - In Formal Ontology in Conceptual Analysis and Knowledge Representation, edited by Nicola Guarino and Roberto Poli, Kluwer Academic Publishers, in press. Substantial revision of paper presented at the International Workshop on Formal Ontology, March, 1993, Padova, Italy. Available as Technical Report KSL 93-04, Knowledge Systems Laboratory, Stanford University.

Other Pages on this subject

http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/ModellingSemanticWeb.htm.

http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/PeterHale/RDF/RDF.htm.

http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/softwareengineering.htm.

User Driven Modelling

In order to make user driven modelling and programming possible, it is essential that a communication mechanism is established, which allows users to generate changes and receive changes generated by the modelling system.

Types of Change

There are two types of change that can be applied to the model driven programming system, User Generated, and Model Generated.

User Generated

Figure 1 shows a user initiating a change, which is to delete a node from the bottom left and attach a new node to a branch in the top tight. The tree is translated to structured text, and this is further translated to Code.

Figure 1 - User Generated Change

For the second user generated change shown in figure 2 an object represented by a tree is visualised as a diagram. The user can amend either the diagram or the tree, in either case the change is filtered to the alternative representation and translated to the structured text and code.

Figure 2 - User Generated Change, Alternative Interfaces

Model Generated

A model generated change is initiated by the model itself, which changes the code and the structured text in response to a calculation (that may have been requested by the user). The model passes a translated result tree to the user interface to let the user know that the recalculations have been finished, and give the user the results using a suitable visualisation. This is shown in figure 3.

Figure 3 - Model Generated Change

More Information on this research is available on my Website at http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/~phale/.

and on my End user programming page at http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/EndUserProgramming.htm.

History of End User Programming

1960s

In the 1960s Dartmouth BASIC programming language [7] was designed and implemented at Dartmouth College by John Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz. Over time BASIC became a popular language for home users, and business use, it introduced many people to programming as a hobby or career. Many of the modern concepts of computer graphics, dynamic objects and object oriented programming were prototyped by Ivan Sutherland in 1963 in Sketchpad [13][14]. In the mid 1960s Seymour Papert, a mathematician who had been working with Piaget in Geneva, came to the United States where he co-founded the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory with Marvin Minsky. Papert worked with the team from Bolt, Beranek and Newman, led by Wallace Feurzeig that created the first version of Logo [25] in 1967. In the late sixties Alan Kay [2][3][17] used the term 'personal computer' and created a concept prototype, the FLEX Machine, he also envisaged a 'Dynabook' machine, the sketches for this look very similar to the laptop computers of recent years. The Simula [28] language was developed by Ole-Johan Dahl and Kristen Nygaard and this included Object-Oriented concepts. Douglas Engelbert's worked on a project to augment the human intellect, as part of the Augment [8] project he demonstrate Hypertext and video conferencing.

1970s

Alan Kay joined the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) [17][19] California in 1971. Throughout the seventies the group at PARC led by Dr. Kay developed an integrated programming language and programming environment called Smalltalk [10]. In the early seventies the Alto personal computer was created at the PARC. The Alto eventually featured the world's first What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get (WYSIWYG) editor, a commercial mouse for input, a graphical user interface (GUI), and bit-mapped display, and offered menus and icons, and linked to a local area network. The Alto provided the foundation for Xerox's STAR 8010 Information System. There was still a need to find a common use for a personal computer that would increase the demand for it. In 1978, Harvard Business School student, Daniel Bricklin, came up with the idea for an interactive visible calculator. Bricklin and Bob Frankston then co-invented the software program VisiCalc [1]. VisiCalc was a spreadsheet, and the first 'killer' application for personal computers as this application provided a justification for using personal computers as a productive tool.

1980s

During the 1980s ownership of personal computers became increasingly popular and many home users programmed using BASIC. In the early eighties IBM developed the first personal computer built from off the shelf parts (called open architecture) [15]. This included a command line operating system written by Microsoft and the Microsoft BASIC programming language. Apple developed the GUI further for the Lisa [5] that later became the Macintosh (Mac). The IBM style PC became most popular for business applications, while the Apple Mac was often used for Desktop publishing.

1990s

End User Programming research has continued to the present day. Research has continued in techniques of Visual Programming [9] e.g. Alice [4], Programming by Example [2][21], programming with automated assistance [20], and Natural Language Programming [27]. Squeak and Croquet[6] have developed from the early work in Smalltalk.

Tim Berners-Lee [23] developed HyperText Markup Language (HTML), and has been involved with the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) [29] in developing standards base languages for the Web. This has encouraged the growth of the 'Semantic Web' [11] which allows both humans and computers to search and interact with pages more and so encouraged the development of interactive web pages and communities.

2000s

Recent, present and future research can enable the use of semantic web technologies, (developed from HTML by Tim Berners-Lee [23] and others), to enable End User Programming. This fusion of research and technologies is illustrated by Henry Lieberman's home page [12] which has explanations of both areas of research. Examples of this fusion include Protégé [22], Jena [16], TopBraid Composer [24], and OpenCyc [18]. Information about these technologies is available in my semantic web page - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/PeterHale/RDF/RDF.htm. A related development is that of web 2.0. Visual development environments based on AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript And XML) [26] aim to reproduce on the web, the functionality provided by office tools such as Excel (which is often used as an End User Programming Environment). Information about Ajax and Web 2.0 is available in my Ajax/web2.0 page - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/Ajax/ajax.htm.

References

1. A Brief History of Spreadsheets - http://dssresources.com/history/sshistory.html - Decision Support System Resources - by D. J. Power, Editor, DSSResources.COM.

2. Alan Kay - http://www.acypher.com/wwid/FrontMatter/index.html - Watch What I Do - Programming by Example.

3. Alan Kay ETech 2003 presentation - http://www.lisarein.com/alankay/tour.html - Lisa Rein's Tour Of Alan Kay's Etech 2003 Presentation.

4. Alice v2.0 - http://www.alice.org/ - Learn to Program Interactive 3D Graphics.

5. Apple Lisa - http://fp3.antelecom.net/gcifu/applemuseum/lisa2.html - The First Affordable GUI - Lisa 1 Jan-83 Jan-84, Lisa 2 Jan-84 Apr-85.

6. Croquet - http://www.opencroquet.org/ - a new open source software platform for creating deeply collaborative multi-user online applications.

7. Dartmouth BASIC - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dartmouth_BASIC - Wikipedia.

8. The Demo - http://sloan.stanford.edu/mousesite/1968Demo.html - Stanford University.

9. Dmoz Open Directory Project - http://dmoz.org/Computers/Programming/Languages/Visual/ - Visual Languages - Programming Languages Reference - Visual Languages.

10. The Early History Of Smalltalk by Alan Kay - http://www.smalltalk.org/smalltalk/TheEarlyHistoryOfSmalltalk_II.html - 1967-69--The FLEX Machine, a first attempt at an OOP-based personal computer - Alan Kay - Smalltalk.org.

11. Fifteen Years of the Web - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/5243862.stm - Internet Timeline - BBC Technology.

12. Henry Lieberman - http://web.media.mit.edu/~lieber/ - Research Scientist - MIT Media Laboratory.

13. History of HCI - http://www.idemployee.id.tue.nl/g.w.m.rauterberg/presentations/HCI-history - Key systems, people and ideas - Presentation by Matthias Rauterberg.

14. History of HCI - Sketchpad (1963) - http://www.idemployee.id.tue.nl/g.w.m.rauterberg/presentations/HCI-history/sld020.htm - Ivan Sutherland - MIT Lab - Presentation by Matthias Rauterberg.

15. Inventors of the Modern Computer - http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aa031599.htm -The History of the IBM PC - International Business Machines.

16. Jena - http://jena.hpl.hp.com/juc2006/proceedings.html - First Jena User Conference - Proceedings.

17. Kyoto Prize Laureates 2004 - http://www.kyotoprize.org/commentary_kay.htm - 2004 Kyoto Prize Laureates - Dr. Alan Curtis Kay (U.S.A., b. 1940) - Computer Scientist, President, Viewpoints Research Institute.

18. OpenCyc - http://www.opencyc.org/ - OpenCyc.org - General knowledge base and commonsense reasoning engine.

19. Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) - History - http://www.parc.xerox.com/about/history/default.html - PARC History.

20. The Programmer's Apprentice - http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=87912&dl=ACM&coll=GUIDE - The ACM Digital Library.

21. Programming by Example - http://web.media.mit.edu/~lieber/PBE/index.html.

22. Protege - http://protege.stanford.edu/ - Protégé Home - Ontology Development Environment.

23. Tim Berners - http://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/Lee - Tim Berners-Lee.

24. TopBraid - http://www.topbraidcomposer.com/ - Semantic Modeling Toolset - Visual modeling environment.

25. What is Logo? - http://el.media.mit.edu/Logo-foundation/logo/index.html - MIT Logo Foundation, What is Logo.

26. Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajax_(programming) - Ajax (programming).

27. Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_language_and_computation - Natural language processing.

28. Simula - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simula - Simula.

29. World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) - http://www.w3.org/ - Leading the Web to Its Full Potential....

Useful End User Programming Links

"A History of Haskell: being lazy with class", Paul Hudak (Yale University), John Hughes (Chalmers University), Simon Peyton Jones (Microsoft Research), Philip Wadler (Edinburgh University), http://research.microsoft.com/~simonpj/papers/history-of-haskell/index.htm - The Third ACM SIGPLAN History of Programming Languages Conference (HOPL-III) San Diego, California, June 9-10, 2007.

Alan Blackwell - University of Cambridge - Human Computer Interaction - End User Programming.

BBC Technology news - Free tool offers 'easy' coding - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6647011.stm - A free programming tool that allows anyone to create their own animated stories, video games and interactive artworks has been developed - Jonathan Fildes - 14 May 2007.

Celebrating the creator of Cobol - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6168489.stm - BBC News - Mark Ward December 11th 2006.

The Centre for Advanced Learning Technologies - The Centre for Advanced Learning Technologies - studying the impact of new media and technologies on the business environment.

Computer History Museum - Exhibits - Timeline.

Computer Languages History - http://www.levenez.com/lang/ - Computer Languages Timeline - Éric Lévénez. - O'Reilly Poster based on Éric Lévénez diagram.

Constructivist Computer Assisted Learning: Theory and Techniques - http://www.ascilite.org.au/conferences/adelaide96/papers/21.html - Barney Dalgarno - Information Services Division - University of Canberra - The changes that have occurred in accepted approaches to teaching and learning in recent years have been underpinned by shifts in psychological and pedagogical theory, culminating in moves towards a constructivist view of learning.

Dmoz Open Directory Project - Programming Languages - Programming Languages Reference - Alphabetic List of Programming Languages - Definitions and Links.

DSpace - http://www.dspace.org/ - The DSpace digital repository system captures, stores, indexes, preserves, and distributes digital research material.

Euses End Users Shaping Effective Software research collaboration - Welcome to EUSES - Research Collaboration.

Euses Presentation - End User Programming - Invited Research Overview - Brad Myers, Andrew Co, Margaret Burnett - Carnegie Mellon, Oregon State Universities.

Generative Programming - Generative Programming - Methods, Tools, and Applications - Krzysztof Czarnecki and Ulrich W. Eisenecker - Addison-Wesley, June 2000.

Hackety Hack - http://hacketyhack.net/ - In this century, you may have dozens of programming languages lurking on your machine. But how to use them?? A fundamental secret! Well, no more. We cannot stand for that. Hackety Hack will not stand to have you in the dark!!

History of Computing - http://www.ieuc.org/end-user-computing/references/notes/HistoryofComputing.html - One of the best works in this regard can be found in the volumes devoted to The History of Programming Languages. - The Insititute for End User Computing.

History of End User Programming - Article - Peter Hale.

History of Haskell - http://haskell.org/haskellwiki/History_of_Haskell.

How the internet transformed business - BBC Business - By Steve Schifferes Business editor, BBC News website.

How the Spectrum began a revolution - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6572711.stm - In April 1982 a small British company, lead by Sir Clive Sinclair, launched the ZX Spectrum computer and sparked a revolution. - 23 April 2007 - BBC News Technology.

How the web went world wide - BBC Technology - Mark Ward Technology Correspondent, BBC News website.

IBM developerWorks Interviews: Rod Smith - http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/podcast/dwi/cm-int062806.html - IBM vice president of Emerging Internet Technologies on the business of watching, encouraging, and leveraging new technologies.

IBM QED Wiki - IBM eyes programming for the masses - By Martin LaMonica - CNET News.com.

I think, therefore I Woz - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6077374.stm - BBC News - Technology - Steve Wozniak,Apple - 25th October 2006.

In pictures: Commodore computers - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_pictures/6454113.stm - The rise, fall and rise again of gaming icon Commodore - 15 March 2007.

ISTI-CNR, Pisa, Italy - Model-based Tools for Pervasive Usability - Fabio Paternò.

John Backus (1924-2007) - John W. Backus, who built and led the IBM team that created Fortran, the first widely used programming language, which helped to open the door to modern computing, died on 17 March at his home in Ashland, Oregon, USA. He was 82.

Journal of Visual Languages and Computing - Journal Home Page - Elsevier.

Network of Excellence on End User Development - Network of Excellence on End User Development - EUD-Net

Oregan State and Houston University - Automatic Generation and Maintenance of Correct Spreadsheets - Martin Erwig, Robin Abraham, Irene Cooperstein, Steve Kollmansberger.

Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) - http://www.parc.com/ - Palo Alto.

Raskin Center - http://rchi.raskincenter.org/index.php?title=Home - Exploting New Interface Directions.

Science Museum - http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/collections/subject_themes/computing.asp - Computing and Information Technology.

Semantic Information Processing - Semantic Information ProcessingMarvin L. Minsky - The MIT Press.

Software Abstractions - Resources and Additional Materials - Book with sample chapters online - Daniel Jackson.

Socratic Arts - http://www.socraticarts.com/ - Online learning services.

Software componentry - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_componentry - Wikipedia - Software componentry.

The beauty of software - British Computer Society Turing Lecture March 2007 Grady Booch - Full write up - http://www.bcs.org/server.php?show=ConWebDoc.10367 - This year's Turing Lecture was given by Grady Booch under the title 'The promise, the limits, the beauty of software.' - 13 March 2007

The Dangers of End-User Programming - Portland State University - Warren Harrison.

The Geometer's Sketchpad:Programming by Geometry - http://www.acypher.com/wwid/Chapters/13Sketchpad.html - R. Nicholas Jackiw and William F. Finzer - from Watch What I Do: Programming by Demonstration - edited by Allen Cypher co-edited by Daniel C. Halbert, David Kurlander, Henry Lieberman, David Maulsby, Brad A. Myers, and Alan Turransky.

The History of Computer Programming Languages - http://www.princeton.edu/~ferguson/adw/programming_languages.shtml - Stephen Ferguson - Princeton University Library.

The History of Computing Project - http://www.thocp.net/.

The Institute for End User Computing, Inc. The Chronicles of End User Computing... http://www.ieuc.org/home/chronicles.html as edited on Saturday, January 22, 2005.

The Institute for End User Computing, Inc. The IEUC Homepage - http://www.ieuc.org/home.html - as edited on Wednesday, May 17, 2006.

The Institute for End User Computing - The Market's Failure to Meet End User Needs - http://www.ieuc.org/home/market-failure.html.

The Magic of the 80's - http://www.ieuc.org/end-user-computing/references/notes/themagicofthe80s.html - For a wonderful cultural history of the early days of the PC revolution, see S. Levy, Hackers : heroes of the computer revolution - The Insititute for End User Computing.

Twenty five years of the IBM PC - BBC News - Technology.

UK home computer pioneer honoured - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6217447.stm - BBC News - British technology pioneer Andrew Hopper becomes a CBE in the New Year Honours list.

Universidad Autónoma de Madrid - Dr José A. Macías - publications - Research - End User Development (EUD).

University of the West of England - UWE Student Project - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/Web%20Semantic/Index.html - Investigating and implement the idea of 'ModConsWest' (Modelling and Constructionism with Web based E-Learning Semantic Tools)" - Lee Ediagbonya and Awaab Eltahir.

Where does the web go from here? - BBC Technology - Bill Thompson.

Useful Publications

A Computer Program to Model and Stimulate Creative Thought, Smith, D. C. (1977), Basel: Birkhauser. 187p.

A History of Haskell: being lazy with class, Paul Hudak (Yale University), John Hughes (Chalmers University), Simon Peyton Jones (Microsoft Research), Philip Wadler (Edinburgh University), http://research.microsoft.com/~simonpj/papers/history-of-haskell/index.htm - The Third ACM SIGPLAN History of Programming Languages Conference (HOPL-III) San Diego, California, June 9-10, 2007.

Estimating the Numbers of End Users and End User Programmers, Scaffidi, C., Shaw, M., Myers, B. (2005). IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing, (VL/HCC'05): 207-214 Dallas, Texas.

Example-based Programming: a pertinent visual approach for learning to program (2004) - University of Poitiers - Nicolas Guibert - Patrick Girard - Laurent Guittet - Proceedings of the working conference on Advanced visual interfaces - Pages: 358 - 361 - ISBN:1-58113-867-9.

History of Programming Languages, Bergin T J, Gibson R G, 1996, Volume 2, ISBN-10: 0-201-89502-1; ISBN-13: 978-0-201-89502-5.

Interaction-Oriented Software Development (2001) Huhns M N, International Journal of Software Engineering and Knowledge Engineering 11 3 259-277.

Model-based tools for pervasive usability, 2005, Paterno Fabio, Interacting with Computers 17, 291-315.

The Programmer's Apprentice, 1990, Rich C, Waters R C, The ACM Digital Library - ISBN:0-201-52425-2.

Watch What I Do: Programming by Demonstration - Cypher, A, 1993, MIT Press, ISBN:0262032139.

http://www.acypher.com/wwid/ - Watch What I Do: Programming by Demonstration - The entire text of this book is included on this web site. Access it through the Table of Contents.

http://www.acypher.com/wwid/FrontMatter/index.html.

Your Wish is My Command: Giving Users the Power to Instruct their Software - http://web.media.mit.edu/~lieber/Your-Wish/ - Henry Lieberman, editor.

I am a Researcher in the final year of my PhD. I specialise in applying Semantic Web techniques. My current research is on a technique of 'User Driven Modelling/Programming'. My intention is to enable non-programmers to create software from a user interface that allows them to model a particular problem or scenario. This involves a user entering information visually in the form of a tree diagram. I am attempting to develop ways of automatically translating this information into program code in a variety of computer languages. This is very important and useful for many employees that have insufficient time to learn programming languages. I am looking to research visualisation, and visualisation techniques to create a human computer interface that allows non experts to create software.

I am a member of the Institute for End User Computing - http://www.ieuc.org/home.html.

My Home Page is http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/~phale/.

A web page for this article is at http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/PeterHale/EndUserHistory.htm.