A code reuse interface for non-programmer middle school students

We describe a code reuse tool for use in the Looking Glass IDE, the successor to Storytelling Alice [17], which enables middle school students with little to no programming experience to reuse functionality they find in programs written by others. Users (1) record a feature to reuse, (2) e responsible for the feature, (3) abstract the code into a reusable Actionscript by describing object “roles,” and (4) integrate the Actionscript into another program. An exploratory study with middle school students indicates they can successfully reuse code. Further, 36 of the 47 users appropriated new programming constructs through the process of reuse. Author Keywords Code reuse, non-programmer, end user, middle school, Looking Glass, Storytelling Alice. ACM Classification Keywords H.5.2 [Information interfaces and presentation]: User Interfaces. General Terms Human Factors

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2010
• Where: IUI
• Authors: Paul A. Gross, Micah S. Herstand, Jordana W. Hodges, Caitlin Kelleher
• Keywords: Code Reuse, IUI 2010, Middle School, Middle School Students, Software Engineering