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Sunday, December 20, 2009

IDE for Education

In one of our courses in Computer Science, our group proposed the use of code inspectors in developing an IDE for Education. The result of the work was a prototype and a document. We conducted a survey to at least 20 people and allow them to evaluate the prototype in Java.

Prototype

Why create another IDE?
Most IDEs are either too complex or too simple. Why not select only the right features we need and redesign the interface to make programming easier for students. The IDE for Education interface gives familiarity to students with only the needed buttons for the current tab. All hassles of creating backups, finding how to word wrap, and changing font sizes are no longer an issue. The IDE is ideal for Programming 1 Courses where creating projects and packages are unnecessary. Error messages during compile-time can also be mapped to more student-friendly explanations.