Knowledge-based Compiler with e-TA for Software Engineering Education
Shun Hattori, Hiroyuki Kameda · 2010
Software is an essential infrastructure today. Our societies re- quire capable human resources who can develop softwares at the high- est level possible, and various educational institutions such as universi- ties provide software engineering (programming) education aggressively. However, those who do not acquire enough programming ability and also hesitate in programming have been increasing in recent years, even though they are Computer Science (CS) or Information Technology (IT) students/graduates. The main reason is that they could not avoid facing very difficult and unexpectedly massive compile errors with unknown technical words when they were beginners of programming. Another reason is that teachers and TAs (Teaching Assistants) cannot always give timely and appropriate advices to varying knowledge or levels of learners. This paper proposes a knowledge-dependent compiler with e- TA (electronic Teaching Agent) for software engineering education, and shows a prototype of our education-oriented Java compiler to present not only static compile errors as-is, but also easy-to-understand advice appropriately and on a timely basis (dynamically) depending on pro- gramming knowledge of learners who browse the compile errors.