“…Among factors contributing to the decline in participation, students' lack of interest and confidence in programming learning is an important factor in poor CS enrollment. Many students, especially women and underrepresented minority students, view the practice of CS as tedious, boring, and irrelevant, because they are scared off by seeing CS as inaccessible and intangible and feel that only geeks do well in programming [3]. ACE is designed and developed to increase the confidence of novice programming student's ability, promote their personal interest, engage and inspire students in the introductory programming courses, and make their learning more efficient and effective.…”