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An Eclipse IDE for Teaching Java–

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Software Technologies (ICSOFT 2015)

Part of the book series: Communications in Computer and Information Science ((CCIS,volume 586))

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Abstract

In this paper, we describe a new Eclipse-based IDE for teaching Java following the object-later approach. This IDE allows the programmer to write code in Java–, a smaller version of the Java language that does not include object-oriented features, and includes all the powerful features available when using an IDE like Eclipse (such as 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.

This work has been supported in part by MIUR (proj. CINA), Ateneo/CSP (proj. SALT), ICT COST Action IC1201 BETTY, and PRIN 2012C4E3KT national research project AMANDA (Algorithmics for MAssive and Networked Data).

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Notes

  1. 1.

    As it is shown in the figure, the student is required to make a leap of faith concerning the use of the static methods to print to the standard output (such as System.out.println()). Although this could have been avoided by implementing a print() method that invokes the corresponding Java method, we preferred to ask the students to use the standard Java methods and to profess their faith in them, rather than give them a solution that is not pure Java, and which could confuse them later on.

  2. 2.

    Xtend, https://eclipse.org/xtend/, is a Java dialect implemented with Xtext and Xbase.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Dipartimento di Informatica, Università di Torino, Torino, Italy

    Lorenzo Bettini

  2. Dipartimento di Ingegneria dell’Informazione, Università di Firenze, Firenze, Italy

    Pierluigi Crescenzi

Authors
  1. Lorenzo Bettini
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  2. Pierluigi Crescenzi
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Lorenzo Bettini .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Haute Alsace, Mulhouse, France

    Pascal Lorenz

  2. Universidade da Coimbra, Coimbra, Portugal

    Jorge Cardoso

  3. Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia

    Leszek A. Maciaszek

  4. Information Systems Group, Enschede, The Netherlands

    Marten van Sinderen

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Bettini, L., Crescenzi, P. (2016). An Eclipse IDE for Teaching Java–. In: Lorenz, P., Cardoso, J., Maciaszek, L., van Sinderen, M. (eds) Software Technologies. ICSOFT 2015. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 586. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-30142-6_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-30142-6_4

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-30141-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-30142-6

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