In ordinary computer programming, the programmer keeps the program's intended results in mind and painstakingly constructs a computer program to achieve those results. Inferential programming refers to (still mostly hypothetical) techniques and technologies enabling the inverse. Inferential programming would allow the programmer to describe the intended result to the computer using a metaphor such as a fitness function

Fitness function

A fitness function is a particular type of objective function that is used to summarise, as a single figure of merit, how close a given design solution is to achieving the set aims....

, a test specification, or a logical specification and then the computer would construct its own program to meet the supplied criteria.

During the 1980s, approaches to achieve inferential programming mostly revolved around techniques for logical inference

Inference

Inference is the act or process of deriving logical conclusions from premises known or assumed to be true. The conclusion drawn is also called an idiomatic. The laws of valid inference are studied in the field of logic.Human inference Inference is the act or process of deriving logical conclusions...

. Today the term is sometimes used in connection with evolutionary computation

Evolutionary computation

In computer science, evolutionary computation is a subfield of artificial intelligence that involves combinatorial optimization problems....

 techniques that enable the computer to evolve a solution in response to a problem posed as a fitness or reward function.

Closely related concepts and technologies

• PROLOG
  Prolog
  Prolog is a general purpose logic programming language associated with artificial intelligence and computational linguistics.Prolog has its roots in first-order logic, a formal logic, and unlike many other programming languages, Prolog is declarative: the program logic is expressed in terms of...
  
  
• Artificial intelligence
  Artificial intelligence
  Artificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it. AI textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its...
  
  
• Genetic programming
  Genetic programming
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• Machine learning
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  Machine learning, a branch of artificial intelligence, is a scientific discipline concerned with the design and development of algorithms that allow computers to evolve behaviors based on empirical data, such as from sensor data or databases...
  
  
• Artificial life
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  Artificial life is a field of study and an associated art form which examine systems related to life, its processes, and its evolution through simulations using computer models, robotics, and biochemistry. The discipline was named by Christopher Langton, an American computer scientist, in 1986...
  
  
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• Metaprogramming
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  Metaprogramming is the writing of computer programs that write or manipulate other programs as their data, or that do part of the work at compile time that would otherwise be done at runtime...
  
  

See also

• Computer science
  Computer science
  Computer science or computing science is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and of practical techniques for their implementation and application in computer systems...
  
  
• Compiler theory
• Unit testing