Programming with Representations (PwR)
PwR aims to redefine software methodology for the generative AI era, enabling professional software teams to process a high volume of changes, faster and better.
The increasing capabilities of generative AI, especially in coding-related tasks, offers us the opportunity to reimagine software development in a world where AI and humans work closely together. This project studies the topic of conversational programming where a developer uses AI to write software using natural language instructions. While natural language can facilitate AI-developer interaction, it also introduces the potential for misinterpreting tasks. Existing solutions address this gap by prompting AI to communicate its understanding in a structured natural-language document. This document can then be inspected, edited, and approved by the developer. While effective, the developer still needs to vet the resulting AI-generated code for safety and reliability, requiring both domain and coding expertise. Our goal is to decouple this requirement, paving the way for numerous organizations and individuals, including those without coding expertise, to develop software.
Programming with Representations (PwR, pronounced “power”) is a software development approach that relies on a domain-specific language (DSL), or representation, defined by a developer specializing in a specific domain. This representation includes built-in guardrails that are automatically implemented throughout the software development process. Once a representation is defined for a domain, PwR enables any developer interested in that domain to translate their intentions using natural language into a program in that representation.