jsdare: a new approach to learning programming
Jan Paul Posma · 2012
We present an online framework for programming education, called jsdare. This framework can be used to create programming courses in, especially for secondary education. In this framework we implement a number of existing interface ideas in a coherent way, including a modern version of the LOGO turtle and Karel the Robot; debugging by quickly stepping forward and backward; a zero-response time compiler using a subset of Javascript; previewing, highlighting and manipulation of statements and expressions; a basic visualisation of variables in different scopes; an integrated reference manual; programming exercises called ‘dares’ in which the objective is to make a short program, similarly to Code Golf; support for events and HTML canvas in order to make games, with support for pausing time, rewinding time, debugging a specific event, editing the program while paused, and abstracting functions over time. Interface and implementation details are rooted in thorough literature research. The programming course has been evaluated in small-scale field trial, the results of which are mostly positive.