In computer science, programming by demonstration (PbD) is an end-user development technique for teaching a computer or a robot new behaviors by demonstrating the task to transfer directly instead of programming it through machine commands.

The terms programming by example (PbE) and programming by demonstration (PbD) appeared in software development research as early as the mid 1980s to define a way to define a sequence of operations without having to learn a programming language. The usual distinction in literature between these terms is that in PbE the user gives a prototypical product of the computer execution, such as a row in the desired results of a query; while in PbD the user performs a sequence of actions that the computer must repeat, generalizing it to be used in different data sets.

These two terms were first undifferentiated, but PbE then tended to be mostly adopted by software development researchers while PbD tended to be adopted by robotics researchers. Today, PbE refers to an entirely different concept, supported by new programming languages that are similar to simulators. This framework can be contrasted with Bayesian program synthesis.