CodeBlocks

Document Type

Abstract

Publication Date

Spring 5-1-2019

Abstract

Many middle schools and high schools introduce their students to programming through Visual Programming Languages (VPLs) like MIT Media Lab’s Scratch and Google’s Blockly. Sporting fully-graphical user interfaces, these tools allow students to click and drag together customizable code “blocks” to create a program. The main benefit of VPLs is the ability for students to quickly translate their abstract ideas into tangible programs without dealing with issues that tend to discourage new programmers – issues such as worrying about the precise syntax required of text-based languages or having to debug code that will not compile. The elimination of these roadblocks makes VPLs an attractive means of introducing students to the basic principles of programming. Upon taking an introductory computer science course at a post-secondary institution, many students will need to make a significant leap from VPLs in order to use common programming languages such as Python or Java. CodeBlocks is an educational IDE that aims to facilitate this transition. CodeBlocks is comprised of an editor, and a visual interpreter. Users can use the editor to write programs in a simplified general-purpose programming language, and the visual interpreter will allow users to view a graphical representation of their program while it is being executed incrementally. The visual interpreter will keep track of every object and event in the user’s program with visual elements, and any updates in the program state will be conveyed through animated changes in position, size, color, etc. In theory, this combination of text-based programming with visual elements will provide students with a more comprehensive understanding of how their code operates internally.

Comments

Completed as part of the Computer Science Senior Capstone Project.

This document is currently not available here.

Share

COinS