Automated construction of memory diagrams for program comprehension

Dalton, Andrew R.; Kreahling, William

doi:10.1145/1900008.1900040

Cited by 6 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 4 publications

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“…Systems built into certain IDEs such as PyCharm for IntelliJ IDEA [16], and ObjectAid for Eclipse [20], can generate UML diagrams from code in existing projects. A paper by Dalton and Kreahling [5] took a step toward automatically generating snapshot diagrams from executable code in an instructional setting, with a focus on generating incorrect diagrams for teaching purposes. Incorrect diagrams were generated through MDL, a custom language specified by the authors, that resembles executable code.…”

Section: Generating Diagrams From Codementioning

confidence: 99%

Snapdown: A Text-Based Snapshot Diagram Language for Programming Education

Whatley

Goldman

Miller

2021

2021 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing (VL/HCC)

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This thesis would not have been possible without the guidance and support of many wonderful people.Thank you to my parents Bill and Jingda, and my brother Alex, for dealing with all the ups and downs in my personal life. Thank you for always believing in me and always pushing me forward, no matter how hard things might seem.Thank you to Max Goldman, my thesis advisor, for teaching me many valuable lessons about research and software development, and always helping me get unstuck from everything, from the smallest bug to the biggest design challenge. Thank you to Rob Miller for always providing valuable and helpful feedback at every step of my project. Thank you both for your constant support, as both mentors and instructors, even as classes and research went remote. Thank you to my fellow UP group members for many fun conversations, always reminding me that I'm not alone and that research truly can be a team effort.Thank you to all the friends I've made over the years, and especially to the MIT Syncopasian family, and the not-so-official (yet) MIT osu! club.Finally, thank you to all the staff members of 6.031 for making a huge positive impact on my experience at MIT. Special thanks to everyone who helped me move 6.031 forward by providing feedback on this work.

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Section: Generating Diagrams From Codementioning

confidence: 99%

Snapdown: A Text-Based Snapshot Diagram Language for Programming Education

Whatley

Goldman

Miller

2021

2021 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing (VL/HCC)

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“…These visualizations are often referred to as stack traces or memory diagrams. These can be drawn by hand [7,11,16,23] or generated automatically by software [9,10,31,33].…”

Section: Program Memory Visualizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Engage Against the Machine: Rise of the Notional Machines as Effective Pedagogical Devices

Dickson

Brown

Becker

2020

Proceedings of the 2020 ACM Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education

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“…Dalton and Kreahling [3] introduced a toolkit that automatically generates memory diagrams of novice programs. Their intention was to improve the skill of novice programmers in understanding object-oriented programming.…”

Section: Memory Diagrams Of Novice Programsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…used regular expressions in a new way that is quite different from conventional lexical analysis by recognizing programming plans and not just lexemes, 2. created a new software tool that automatically translates novice programs into more detailed textual algorithms, 3. tested this tool with many novice programs and reported the results, and 4. coined the word "narration" and used this word to describe highly detailed textual algorithms generated with the new tool developed in this work.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Abstracting and Narrating Novice Programs Using Regular Expressions

Ade-Ibijola

Ewert

Sanders

2014

Proceedings of the Southern African Institute for Computer Scientist and Information Technologists Annual Conference 2014 on SA

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The Syntax-Free Approach (SFA) to teaching programming was proposed in response to the perceived challenges often faced by novice programmers while taking their first course in programming. The idea of the SFA is to provide a level of abstraction over the language syntax and teach programming to novices as algorithms instead of lines of code. In this paper, we report the development of a tool that translates novice programs into detailed textual algorithms using regular expressions. We refer to these algorithms as narrations. These narrations are syntax-free, can improve readability and aid the comprehension of programs. The technique described can also be employed for automatic generation of hints or tips for novice programmers during classroom or laboratory sessions.

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Automated construction of memory diagrams for program comprehension

Cited by 6 publications

References 4 publications

Snapdown: A Text-Based Snapshot Diagram Language for Programming Education

Snapdown: A Text-Based Snapshot Diagram Language for Programming Education

Engage Against the Machine: Rise of the Notional Machines as Effective Pedagogical Devices

Abstracting and Narrating Novice Programs Using Regular Expressions

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