An error in a spreadsheet or Web page calculation sounds harmless enough, unless you're the person whose retirement funds, credit history or medical treatment rely on decisions based on that calculation. A six-campus team of computer scientists led by Margaret Burnett at Oregon State University is working to help exterminate the bugs that infest the spreadsheets and other "programs" created by millions of computer users. You may not think of yourself as a programmer, but that's just what you are if you've ever created a simple Web application that grabs data, such as current weather conditions, from another site, entered a formula in a spreadsheet or automated a repetitive task in your e-mail client or word processor. Experts estimate the number of these so-called "end-user programmers" to reach 55 million by 2005, and the same experts suggest that nearly half of the programs created by these end users have nontrivial bugs.
posted by Marcus Zillman |
4:05 AM
