Blink: An Educational Software Debugger for Scratch
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Abstract
Debugging is an important aspect of programming. Most programming languages have some features and tools to facilitate debugging. As the debugging process is also frustrating, it requires good scaffolding, in which a debugger can be a useful tool [3]. Scratch is a visual block-based programming language that is commonly used to teach programming to children, aged 10--14 [4]. It comes with its own integrated development environment (IDE), where children can edit and run their code. This IDE misses some of the tools that are available in traditional IDEs, such as a debugger. In response to this challenge, we developed Blink. Blink is a debugger for Scratch with the aim of being usable to the young audience that typically uses Scratch.
We present the currently implemented features of the debugger, and the challenges we faced while implementing those, both from a user-experience standpoint and a technical standpoint.
References
[1]
2023. Scratch Addons. https://scratchaddons.com/
[2]
Thomas Ball, Abhijith Chatra, Peli de Halleux, Steve Hodges, Micha? Moskal, and Jacqueline Russell. 2019. Microsoft MakeCode: Embedded Programming for Education, in Blocks and TypeScript. In Proceedings of the 2019 ACM SIGPLAN Symposium on SPLASH-E. Association for Computing Machinery, 7--12. https://doi.org/10.1145/3358711.3361630
[3]
ChanMin Kim, Lucas Vasconcelos, Brian R. Belland, Duygu Umutlu, and Cory Gleasman. 2022. Debugging behaviors of early childhood teacher candidates with or without scaffolding. International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education 19, 1 (10 Mar 2022), 26. https://doi.org/10.1186/s41239-022-00319--9
[4]
John Maloney, Mitchel Resnick, Natalie Rusk, Brian Silverman, and Evelyn Eastmond. 2010. The Scratch Programming Language and Environment. ACM Trans. Comput. Educ. 10, 4 (nov 2010), 15 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/1868358.1868363
[5]
Brandon L. Wang. 2021. Developing Resources for Debugging Education using Block-based Languages. Master's thesis. https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/139091
Index Terms
- Blink: An Educational Software Debugger for Scratch
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Published In
June 2023
694 pages
ISBN:9798400701399
DOI:10.1145/3587103
- General Chairs:
- Mikko-Jussi Laakso,
- Mattia Monga,
- Program Chairs:
- Simon,
- Judithe Sheard
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Published: 29 June 2023
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