Authors:
Lorenzo Bettini
1
and
Pierluigi Crescenzi
2
Affiliations:
1
University of Turin, Italy
;
2
University of Florence, Italy
Keyword(s):
DSL, Java, IDE, Eclipse, Xtext, EMF.
Related
Ontology
Subjects/Areas/Topics:
Domain-Specific Languages
;
Model Tools
;
Models
;
Paradigm Trends
;
Software Engineering
Abstract:
In this paper, we introduce a new Eclipse-based IDE for teaching Java following the object-later approach. In particular, this IDE allows the programmer to write code in Java--, a smaller version of the Java language that
does not include object-oriented features. For the implementation of this language we used Xtext, an Eclipse framework for implementing Domain Specific Languages; besides the compiler mechanisms, Xtext also allows
to easily implement all the IDE tooling mechanisms in Eclipse. By using Xtext we were able to provide an implementation of Java-- with all the powerful features available when using an IDE like Eclipse (including
debugging, automatic building, and project wizards). With our implementation, it is also straightforward to create self-assessment exercises for students, which are integrated in Eclipse and JUnit.