Using contour diagrams and JIVE to illustrate object-oriented semantics in the Java programming language

Authors:
James T. Streib;Takako Soma
Affiliations:
Illinois College, Jacksonville, IL, USA;Illinois College, Jacksonville, IL, USA
Venue:
Proceedings of the 41st ACM technical symposium on Computer science education
Year:
2010

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Abstract

Organick, Forsythe, and Plummer extensively used contour diagrams to illustrate the semantics of procedural and functional programming languages. However, many of the benefits of contour diagrams can still be utilized in explaining the semantics of object-oriented languages and is evident in the software JIVE created by Gestwicki and Jayaraman. This paper illustrates the use of both contour diagrams and JIVE to help students understand passing objects via parameters, returning objects from methods, comparing objects, and using inheritance in the Java programming language. The results from a small informal survey are included. This paper is useful to those teaching Java in a first-year computer science sequence.