Program Execution and Visualization on the Web

Abstract

Programming is a demanding task with an education program that requires the assistance of complex tools such as programming environments, algorithm animators, problem graders, etc. In this chapter, we give a comprehensive presentation of tools for program execution and visualization on the Web. We summarize the technical evolution of these tools, describe educational uses, report lessons learned, and look at formal evaluations of their educational effectiveness. We also deal with a closely related matter, namely, collections of Web documents containing programming exercises. Finally, we outline our view of future trends in the use of the Web for programming education, and we give our personal conclusions. This chapter is of interest to educators and researchers, because it gives a comprehensive presentation of the main issues and results of a field where most of the contributions are sparse in the literature.