A Software Tool for an Introductory Java']Java Programming Course

We have noticed that the beginning programming students often make programming errors such as leaving out mandatory opening and/or closing curly braces, leaving out a mandatory semicolon, putting in an extraneous semicolon, and misspelling a keyword. Also, the error messages generated by the standard Java compiler in Such situations do not state the exact problem. As a result, it is difficult for the students to identify and fix their errors. Therefore, we have developed a software tool that can be used to write Java programs and it has a language analysis component that can detect the common programming errors and report their causes more precisely. Our tool also provides two unique types of exercises with the goal of helping the students build up their problem-solving skills so that they can write code from scratch. It also allows the user to review lecture notes in an easy-to-view manner while they are doing the exercises using this tool. The lecture notes and the exercises can be easily downloaded and updated or incorporated into our tool through our friendly user interface. The tool can be used by students in introductory programming courses either in or outside the classroom.