The State of the Art in End-User Software Engineering
Ko et al., 2011, published in ACM Computing Surveys. This landmark survey synthesizes decades of research on end-user software engineering. Its key finding: far more end-user programmers exist than professional software developers. Spreadsheet users, scientists writing scripts, and web designers all build software without formal training. The paper documents a massive, persistent gap between what people need to build and what professional development can deliver. It remains a foundational reference for the malleable software and no-code movements, framing the challenge of enabling non-programmers to create reliable tools.