research-article

Automated construction of memory diagrams for program comprehension

Authors:

Andrew R. Dalton,

William KreahlingAuthors Info & Claims

ACMSE '10: Proceedings of the 48th annual ACM Southeast Conference

Article No.: 22, Pages 1 - 6

https://doi.org/10.1145/1900008.1900040

Published: 15 April 2010 Publication History

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Abstract

Memory diagrams serve as a visualization technique that enables students to better understand the abstract state of program memory. Unlike traditional program visualizations, memory diagrams illustrate where variables of different types and storage classes are allocated. Our experience is that memory diagrams enhance the ability of novice programmers to understand object-oriented programming. Unfortunately, however, constructing these diagrams by hand can prove tedious.

We introduce a toolkit for constructing memory diagrams. The toolkit enables students to verify their understanding of the state of their programs' memory, and allows instructors to generate both correct and incorrect diagrams to test their students' understanding of course material. We evaluate the toolkit in terms of its ability to generate visualizations of various Java language constructs including enumerations, arrays, and reference aliasing.

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Cited By

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Blanco ABergel AAlcocer J(2022)Software Visualizations to Analyze Memory Consumption: A Literature ReviewACM Computing Surveys10.1145/348513455:1(1-34)Online publication date: 17-Jan-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3485134
Whatley DGoldman MMiller R(2021)Snapdown: A Text-Based Snapshot Diagram Language for Programming Education2021 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing (VL/HCC)10.1109/VL/HCC51201.2021.9576201(1-9)Online publication date: 10-Oct-2021
https://doi.org/10.1109/VL/HCC51201.2021.9576201
Dragon TDickson PAlphonce CTims JCaspersen MEdwards S(2016)Memory DiagramsProceedings of the 47th ACM Technical Symposium on Computing Science Education10.1145/2839509.2844607(546-551)Online publication date: 17-Feb-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2839509.2844607
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Index Terms

Automated construction of memory diagrams for program comprehension
1. Software and its engineering
  1. Software notations and tools
    1. General programming languages
      1. Language types
        Object oriented languages

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Information

Published In

ACMSE '10: Proceedings of the 48th annual ACM Southeast Conference

April 2010

488 pages

ISBN:9781450300643

DOI:10.1145/1900008

Conference Chair:
H. Conrad Cunningham
University of Mississippi
,
Program Chairs:
Paul Ruth,
Nicholas A. Kraft

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 15 April 2010

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ACM SE '10

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ACM SE '10: ACM Southeast Regional Conference

April 15 - 17, 2010

Mississippi, Oxford

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ACMSE '10 Paper Acceptance Rate 48 of 94 submissions, 51%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 502 of 1,023 submissions, 49%

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Cited By

View all

Blanco ABergel AAlcocer J(2022)Software Visualizations to Analyze Memory Consumption: A Literature ReviewACM Computing Surveys10.1145/348513455:1(1-34)Online publication date: 17-Jan-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3485134
Whatley DGoldman MMiller R(2021)Snapdown: A Text-Based Snapshot Diagram Language for Programming Education2021 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing (VL/HCC)10.1109/VL/HCC51201.2021.9576201(1-9)Online publication date: 10-Oct-2021
https://doi.org/10.1109/VL/HCC51201.2021.9576201
Dragon TDickson PAlphonce CTims JCaspersen MEdwards S(2016)Memory DiagramsProceedings of the 47th ACM Technical Symposium on Computing Science Education10.1145/2839509.2844607(546-551)Online publication date: 17-Feb-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2839509.2844607
Ade-Ibijola AEwert SSanders Ide Villiers Cvan der Merwe A(2014)Abstracting and Narrating Novice Programs Using Regular ExpressionsProceedings of the Southern African Institute for Computer Scientist and Information Technologists Annual Conference 2014 on SAICSIT 2014 Empowered by Technology10.1145/2664591.2664601(19-28)Online publication date: 29-Sep-2014
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2664591.2664601

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CS1 assessment using memory diagrams

A study of the development of students' visualizations of program state during an elementary object-oriented programming course

A study of the development of students' visualizations of program state during an elementary object-oriented programming course