The agentsheets behavior exchange

摘要

In end-user programming it is still hard to overcome the tension between usability and expressiveness. Some end-user programming approaches focus on simple use but they make it hard or even impossible to write programs expressing useful functionality. Other programming approaches can be very expressive by allowing the construction of arbitrary complex programs but this expressiveness comes at the price of usability. End user programming approaches that are at least reasonably usable and expressive at the same time require not merely a syntactic improvement of programming languages but a new way to conceptualize the programming process in a social context. Social behavior processing describes the idea of elevating programming components to the level of easily composable and decomposable entities that can be shared through the World Wide Web with a community of end-users. The Agentsheets Behavior Exchange is outlined here as a forum for end-user programmers, including middle school kids and professionals, to (a) compose behaviors in order to create interactive SimCity#8482;-like simulations and games, to (b) comprehend behaviors created by other users or by themselves, and to (c) share these behaviors with other users.