Structured Planning and Debugging

Abstract

The SPADE theory uses linguistic formalisms to model the program plann ing and debugging processes. The rheo:>ry heg ins with a taxonomy of buic planning concepts covering strategies fnr identi.ficalion, deco.mposilion and refnrmulation. A handle ·js prn•i•lr•l for recognizing interactions between goals and deriving a linear solution. A complementary tuonomy nf rational bugs and assnciate•l repair techniques is also provided. SPI\Of: introduces a new data structure to facilitate debugging -- the derivatinn tree nf the program. SPADE generali7.eS recent work in Artificial Intelligence by Sussman and Sacerdoti on automatic programming, and e•lemb the theory of program design devclopml by the Struct·ured lrogramming movement. It provides a more structured i nformation processing model of human problem solving th .an the pr .o•luction systems nf Newell and Simon, and articulates the type nf problem solving curriculum advncated by Papert's Logo Project.