Speculative reprogramming

Abstract

Although software development involves making numerous decisions amongst alternatives, the design and implementation choices made typically become invisible; what a developer sees in the project's artifacts are the end result of all of the decisions. What if, instead, all of the choices made were tracked and it was easy for a developer to revisit a point where a decision was made and choose another alternative? What if the development environment could detect and suggest alternative choices? What if it was easy and low-cost to try another path? We explore the idea of speculative reprogramming that could support a what-if environment for the programming stages of software development.