HISyn: human learning-inspired natural language programming

Zifan Nan, Hui Guan, Xipeng Shen

Abstract: Natural Language (NL) programming automatically synthesizes code based on inputs expressed in natural language. It has recently received lots of growing interest. Recent solutions however all require many labeled training examples for their data-driven nature. This paper proposes an NLU-driven approach, a new approach inspired by how humans learn programming. It centers around Natural Language Understanding and draws on a novel graph-based mapping algorithm, foregoing the need of large numbers of labeled examples. The resulting NL programming framework, HISyn, using no training examples, gives synthesis accuracy comparable to those by data-driven methods trained on hundreds of training numbers. HISyn meanwhile demonstrates advantages in interpretability, error diagnosis support, and cross-domain extensibility.