Supporting Life Scientists via End User Programming

We discuss the application of techniques and theories from End User Programming to life sciences in general, and Executable Biology in particular. We briefly outline some motivations, current progress and challenges to that the field faces. We conclude by arguing that the application of End User Programming techniques will be mutually beneficial for both life sciences and computing. 1. What is End User Programming (EUP)? EUP is the study of the special requirements of people who aren’t professional software developers to engage in programming. Examples include accountants producing spreadsheets, astrophysicists building computational models of stars, and home users programming heating controllers. The population of end user programmers is very substantial, current estimates are that by 2012 there will be between 13 and 55 million End User Programmers in the US compared to only 3 million professional programmers (Scaffidi et al. 2005). Research in EUP1 includes studies of how and when people start programming (Blackwell, 2002), what strategies they use (Subrahmaniyan et al, 2008), how to increase the reliability of end user software, and tradeoffs in the design of programming languages (Green, 1989) EUP is being applied to a wide variety of problems, ranging from security usability (Church, 2008) t