A simulation-based learning environment for learning debugging

Abstract

With the advancement of technology, more people start to learn how to code. Debugging skills are important to learn programming. We found that traditional software debugging tools are difficult for novices in fixing bugs. However, most of the programming learning support systems emphasize on language syntax structures rather than debugging strategies. In this paper, we design a simulation-based environment which provides novices with debugging scaffoldings. The scaffoldings are aimed to help novices detect and correct logic errors in programs by visualizing execution results. With the visualized debugging scaffoldings, we hope it can help novices improve debugging performance and debugging capabilities.