Technology for Automatic Generation of Application Programs -- A Pragmatic View

This article pragmatically reviews and appraises significant technology and efforts directed toward enhancing application program development and productivity and the challenging automatic generation of application programs. The topics covered are: decision table technology, programming by questionnaire, existing customizers, technology for customizing application programs, COBOL generators, and special purpose languages. Also discussed are efforts related to problem statement languages, automated information system development, and artificial-intelligence-oriented model and program synthesis in the futuristic range of software automation. An overview of program generators is provided to relate the scattered and fragmented literature. The intent of this article is to present the r interrelationship, justification, usage, the state-of-the-art, and to stimulate further discussion and much needed advances.