Java-Meets Eclipse - An IDE for Teaching Java Following the Object-later Approach

Lorenzo Bettini (1) , Pierluigi Crescenzi (2, 3)

1 Dipartimento di Informatica [Torino]
2 UniFI - Università degli Studi di Firenze = University of Florence = Université de Florence
3 ERABLE - Equipe de recherche européenne en algorithmique et biologie formelle et expérimentale

In this paper, we introduce a new Eclipse-based IDE for teaching Java following the object-later approach. In particular, this IDE allows the programmer to write code in Java--, a smaller version of the Java language that does not include object-oriented features. For the implementation of this language we used Xtext, an Eclipse framework for implementing Domain Specific Languages; besides the compiler mechanisms, Xtext also allows to easily implement all the IDE tooling mechanisms in Eclipse. By using Xtext we were able to provide an implementation of Java-- with all the powerful features available when using an IDE like Eclipse (including debugging, automatic building, and project wizards). With our implementation, it is also straightforward to create self-assessment exercises for students, which are integrated in Eclipse and JUnit.

Mots clés: DSL; Java; IDE; Eclipse; Xtext; EMF

Domaines: Algorithme et structure de données [cs.DS]

Lorenzo Bettini, Pierluigi Crescenzi. Java-Meets Eclipse - An IDE for Teaching Java Following the Object-later Approach . International Conference on Software Paradigm Trend (ICSOFT-PT), Sep 2015, Colmar, France. pp.31-42, ⟨10.5220/0005512600310042⟩. ⟨hal-01249109⟩