| Grant Title: | Programmable Applications for Computational Physics: Integrating Programming Environments with Direct Manipulation Interfaces |
|---|---|
| Sponsor: | National Science Foundation |
| Principal Investigators: |
Michael Eisenberg |
| Period of Support: | July 1992 - June 1995 |
Current computational environments for scientists suffer from various deficiencies: they are generally non-interactive; difficult to program; and provide little in the way of direct-manipulation interfaces, domain-specific language constructs, or facilities for symbolic (or more broadly non-numerical) programming. We therefore propose to build a suite of programmable applications for computational physics (in the following three domains: oscillators, diffusion-limited aggregation, and chemical kinetics). These applications will be designed with an eye toward maximal expressiveness--they will be interactive systems with learnable interfaces and (in each case) a domain-enriched dialect of Scheme to provide programmability. In building these applications, we intend not only to provide powerful, expressive computational media for scientists, but additionally we wil use our experience to articulate braod, practical guidelines for programmable application design.