Abstracting and Narrating Novice Programs Using Regular Expressions

Abstract

The Syntax-Free Approach (SFA) to teaching programming was proposed in response to the perceived challenges often faced by novice programmers while taking their first course in programming. The idea of the SFA is to provide a level of abstraction over the language syntax and teach programming to novices as algorithms instead of lines of code. In this paper, we report the development of a tool that translates novice programs into detailed textual algorithms using regular expressions. We refer to these algorithms as narrations. These narrations are syntax-free, can improve readability and aid the comprehension of programs. The technique described can also be employed for automatic generation of hints or tips for novice programmers during classroom or laboratory sessions.

Syntactic Generation of Research Thesis Sketches Across Disciplines Using Formal Grammars

“…In our daily activities, technologies have been so helpful in many aspects of our lives. Numerous tools have been created to address issues, such as visualization tools that offer graphic descriptions of programs and summarizing tools that offer a concise written summary of a program's functioning [24]. The creation and manipulation of strings has gained importance in many different areas of computing [25] [26].…”

Synthesis of SQL Queries from South African Local Language Narrations

“…Abstract nature of programming From a novice learners' perspective, the process of learning a new programming language remains a daunting task [30,31]. Even so, the abstract nature of programming has resulted in high failure rates for Computer Science (CS) disciplines [32,33].…”

“…An ideal approach would be to enable such learners to express their intention, free from natural language ambiguitiesin narrations. Narrations have been shown to provide textual explanations for programming and scripting language paradigms [12,14,33]. This practice allows learners to express their requests in free-forms, ignoring programming language syntax.…”