Debugging tutor: preliminary evaluation

TL;DR: This study investigates the difference between BlueJ 3 and BlueJ 4, two versions of a pedagogical programming environment that offer different mechanisms for compilation and error message presentation and finds evidence that these differences provide users with fundamentally different programming experiences.

TL;DR: A key contribution of this research project is the development of a novel approach to compiler error categorization and hint generation based on token patterns called the Token Signature Technique.

TL;DR: RoboBUG is a serious game that can be customized with respect to different programming languages and game levels and to provide students a more enjoyable and motivating experience.

TL;DR: The experiment reported here shows that programmers also routinely break programs into one kind of coherent piece which is not coniguous.

TL;DR: Bugs are discovered in the process of relating plans to the code; PROUST can give deep explanations of program bugs by relating the buggy code to its underlying intentions.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors describe a program called PROUST which does on-line analysis and understanding of Pascal programs written by novice programmers, using a knowledge base of programming plans and strategies, together with common bugs associated with them.

TL;DR: It is discovered that many students with a good understanding of programming do not acquire the skills to debug programs effectively, and this is a major impediment to their producing working code of any complexity.