Um Interpretador Gráfico de Comandos baseado na JVM como ferramenta de ensino de Programação, Algoritmos e Estruturas de Dados

Abstract

In disciplines of Programming, Data Structures and Algorithms of Computer Science courses, tools that permit the visualization of the the data structures changing throughout the execution of a program by the students are very useful because they assist that the students learn how the algorithms operate over the data structures. Many tools were proposed since the pioneer work of [Brown e Sedgewick 1984]. In some of them, the graphical visualization of the data structures through the animations can only be done by the users programming and in others there are a lack of resources that forbid their use in the whole pedagogical process. Thus, in this work an Interpreter for the IGED (Graphical Interpreter of Data Structures) teaching tool was developed. This Interpreter was designed based in the JVM and enable that codes implementing various algorithms in an object oriented language be executed by the tool so that it generates as output the graphical visualization of the data structures. The architecture of the Interpreter developed in this work and its components were detailed and the functional requirements it may have as a teaching tool, being useful for other disciplines of Computer Science, were defined. Furthermore, was justified why an own implementation of an Interpreter for the IGED was done if there are JVM implementations available and widely used. In the experiments, was demonstrated that the Interpreter may execute code with useful characteristics for these disciplines.