Zoea -- Composable Inductive Programming Without Limits

Abstract

Automatic generation of software from some form of specification has been a long standing goal of computer science research. To date successful results have been reported for the production of relatively small programs. This paper presents Zoea which is a simple programming language that allows software to be generated from a specification format that closely resembles a set of automated functional tests. Zoea incorporates a number of advances that enable it to generate software that is large enough to have commercial value. Zoea also allows programs to be composed to form still larger programs. As a result Zoea can be used to produce software of any size and complexity. An overview of the core Zoea language is provided together with a high level description of the symbolic AI based Zoea compiler.