Semantic-oriented Programming - SymADE

SymADE

SymADE (Symbolic Adaptable Development Environment) is an open-source IDE and implementation of SOP (Semantic-oriented programming) paradigm.

In SymADE a program is edited and stored as a tree of semantic nodes (meanings). The tree is edited by structural editor, and programmers can edit either the semantic tree directly or a projection of the semantic tree onto syntax tree. There may be multiple projections of the same tree, and they can be rendered on the screen as reach text, as UML diagrams and so on.

Semantic meanings are completely user-defined. This allows to use SymADE for creating and editing new domain-specific languages, modify existing languages, use in the same piece of code a mix of multiple languages.

SymADE is common in spirit with IP and MPS. The main difference is that they define and edit syntax trees, but in SymADE you create and edit semantic trees. This gives an unbound possibility for automating code writing, i.e. the actual code can be written by computer based on dialog interaction with programmers. And of cause, the SymADE project is open-source, unlike proprietary IP and MPS development environments.

The higher automation of code writing will allow to create more complex programs without increasing the amount of abstraction layers - because the computer, not programmers, will take care of the code complexity. This will allow to write more complex programs without increasing resource requirements (CPU speed and memory size).