Implementing function spreadsheets

    Research output: Conference Article in Proceeding or Book/Report chapterArticle in proceedingsResearchpeer-review

    Abstract

    A large amount of end-user development is done with spreadsheets. The spreadsheet metaphor is attractive because it is visual and accommodates interactive experimentation, but as observed by Peyton Jones, Blackwell and Burnett, the spreadsheet metaphor does not admit even the most basic abstraction: that of turning an expression into a named function. Hence they proposed a way to define a function in terms of a worksheet with designated input and output cells; we shall call it a function sheet. The goal of our work is to develop implementations of function sheets and study their application to realistic examples. Therefore, we are also developing a simple yet comprehensive spreadsheet core implementation for experimentation with this technology. Here we report briefly on our experiments with function sheets as well as other uses of our spreadsheet core implementation.
    Original languageEnglish
    Title of host publicationInternational Conference on Software Engineering : Proceedings of the 4th international workshop on End-user software engineering
    PublisherAssociation for Computing Machinery
    Publication date2008
    Pages91-94
    ISBN (Print)978-1-60558-034-0
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 2008
    EventFourth Workshop on End-User Software Engineering (WEUSE IV) In conjunction with ICSE 2008 - Leipzig, Germany
    Duration: 12 May 200812 May 2008
    Conference number: 4

    Workshop

    WorkshopFourth Workshop on End-User Software Engineering (WEUSE IV) In conjunction with ICSE 2008
    Number4
    Country/TerritoryGermany
    CityLeipzig
    Period12/05/200812/05/2008

    Keywords

    • End-user development
    • Spreadsheets
    • Function sheet
    • Visual programming
    • Interactive experimentation

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