Comparing feature sets within visual and command line environments and their effect on novice programming (abstract only)

Teaching Students to Program Using Visual Environments: Impetus for a Faulty Mental Model?

“…The feature sets within visual environments typically provide a higher level of assistance to students when learning to program [5]. For example, IDEs can provide a large quantity of features that are designed specifically to assist users with programming; these include syntax highlighting, error highlighting, auto completion, mouse usage, and integrated compilation/execution.…”

“…*Feature set can readily be altered Figure 5 illustrates a continuum of basic feature sets that can be seen amongst visual and command line environments [5]. Feature sets enable these environments to provide low, moderate, or high assistance to a programmer.…”

“…As listed on the continuum, Vi/Vim is an example text editor that provides limited features, which include syntax highlighting and mouse usage for programming. In addition, environments that represent this region of the continuum tend to be command-line oriented [5].…”

“…These traits include: command sets, independent window for compiling/executing (or interpreting), and manual debugging. Example environments that represent this region of the continuum are rich-featured editors, intermediate and advanced/commercial IDEs [5].…”

“…In addition, physical or animated output can be used as an alternative to textual output. Example environments that represent this region of the continuum are graphical environments like Alice and Scratch, and pedagogical IDEs [5].…”