Metaphor-Based Animation of OO Programs Showcase Display Spring 2007

Program visualization and animation has traditionally been done at the level of the programming language and its implementation in a computer. However, novices do not know these concepts and visualizations that build upon programming language implementation may easily fail in helping novices to learn programming concepts. Metaphor, on the contrary, involves the presentation of a new idea in terms of a more familiar one and can facilitate active learning.

In the metaphor-based animator OO concepts are represented by the following metaphors: classes: blueprints in a blueprint book objects: watch panels state: monitors method invocation: workshops message passing: envelope return values: workbench object reference: pennant garbage collection: garbage vehicle

For more information, see, e.g.,

Sajaniemi J., Byckling P., Gerdt P. (2006) Metaphor-Based Animation of OO Programs. Proceedings SOFTVIS 06 ACM Symposium on Software Visualization, Brighton, U.K., September 2006, Association for Computing Machinery, 173-174.

Last updated: 22.5.2007