Supporting the cooperation of end-user programmers through social development environments

Many programs are being created by end-users without formal training in programming. Spreadsheets are the most popular environment for this, but mashups which combine public services into new, albeit small applications are also becoming more and more popular. Research shows that end-user programmers make potentially costly mistakes. Yet initiatives that aim at bringing software engineering principles to end-users are still rudimentary. In particular, we see much unused potential in approaches that foster and support the cooperation among end-user programmers. Whereas the application of mechanisms from social software to software engineering problems is gaining traction, this has not yet been investigated sufficiently for end-user software engineering.