---
title: "Domain Specific Debugging Aids for Novice Programmers"
authors:
  - "Joachim H. Laubsch"
  - "Marc Eisenstadt"
doi: ""
url: "https://ijcai.org/proceedings/1981/184"
pdf: "https://ijcai.org/proceedings/1981/0184.pdf"
venue: "Proceedings of the Seventh International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence"
year: 1981
pages: "964-968"
track: "Computer Aided Instruction"
keywords:
---

# Domain Specific Debugging Aids for Novice Programmers

Joachim H. Laubsch, Marc Eisenstadt

*Proceedings of the Seventh International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence*, pages 964-968.

## Abstract

We have been developing a debugging aid tailored to novice programmers learning to use a simple assertional database language. Based in part on existing programmer's apprentice and debugging projects, our system makes several novel contributions: it is oriented towards a large audience (several hundred per year) of computernaive users; the system deals with argument passing, recursion, and side-effects. Symbolic evaluation of the user's code produces an effect-description which is compared with an idealised effect-description (derived from a library plan). The library plan uses domainspecific knowledge to allow the user a great deal of freedom to invent alternate approaches to the programming task at hand. Based on effectdescription mismatches, a variety of hints for correcting the code can be given to the student.