A didactic object-oriented, prototype-based visual programming environment

Object-oriented programming is widely used in both the industry and the education areas. The most-common model of object-oriented programming is the class-based one. However, popular languages not implementing this model are gaining traction as time goes by. This alternative model is the prototype-b...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inScience of computer programming Vol. 176; pp. 1 - 13
Main Authors García Perez-Schofield, Baltasar, Ortin, Francisco
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Elsevier B.V 01.05.2019
Subjects
Education
Object-oriented programming
Prototype-based model
Visual programming
Visual programming
Object-oriented programming
Prototype-based model
Education
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Summary:Object-oriented programming is widely used in both the industry and the education areas. The most-common model of object-oriented programming is the class-based one. However, popular languages not implementing this model are gaining traction as time goes by. This alternative model is the prototype-based one, with one key characteristic: there are no classes. In this paper, a visual tool is proposed as a vehicle for learning the prototype-based object-oriented programming, present, for instance, in Self, Lua, or JavaScript. This software has been in use for three years in a subject of the Computer Science Engineering degree, at the University of Vigo. •Pooi is an interactive environment which updates with each instruction.•The system sports an diagram viewer, an object inspector, and a REPL.•The software was designed for undergraduate students of computer science engineering.•This tool has been used successfully in lecturing object-oriented programming.•Pooi is free, offering also the sources, and a set of tutorials and examples: http://jbgarcia.webs.uvigo.es/prys/pooi/.
ISSN:0167-6423
1872-7964
DOI:10.1016/j.scico.2019.02.004