Visual Zero: A persistent and interactive object-oriented programming environment

  • Authors:

  • J. Baltasar García Perez-Schofield;Emilio García Roselló;Francisco Ortín Soler;Manuel Pérez Cota

  • Affiliations:

  • Faculty of Computer Science, University of Vigo, Edificio Politécnico, s/n Campus As Lagoas, 32004 Ourense, España, Spain;Department of Computer Science, University of Vigo, Edificio Fundición, s/n Campus As Lagoas-Marcosende, 36200 Vigo, Spain;Computer Science Department, Calvo Sotelo s/n, University of Oviedo, 33007 Oviedo, Spain;Faculty of Computer Science, University of Vigo, Edificio Politécnico, s/n Campus As Lagoas, 32004 Ourense, España, Spain

  • Venue:
  • Journal of Visual Languages and Computing
  • Year:
  • 2008

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Abstract

In this article, an ongoing research project held in the Computer Science department of the University of Vigo is described. Its main objective is to develop an interactive object-oriented environment, serving as a vehicle for learning object-oriented programming. It currently consists of a virtual machine, an assembler, compilers for two high-level programming languages, and an educational visual programming environment. Its main characteristics are (a) the support of prototype-based object orientation, which is a model of object orientation that actually wraps the class-based model; (b) the support for object persistence, which simplifies all input/output issues to the minimum, and (c) the availability of a new visual programming environment is an invaluable help. We the authors think that the combination of all of these possibilities, will lead to an interesting, useful tool that would be recommended for object-oriented teaching. The whole system has been successfully employed in a number of different courses, allowing students to concentrate on objects and their relationships from the very beginning, and thus helping them to achieve a high degree of knowledge about the object-oriented programming paradigm.