This question was kicked about in December. A student of mine stumbled on a syntax highlighting related "conceptual bug" today. Thought I'd share/revisit a dead thread.
On that thread, Alan suggested we use all our spare time to write a reasonable program editor, Frank called for the SDI of the text editor world and asked what we could do for Emacs (not what it could do for us), some colourful images were kicked around, and Thomas asked in http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]/msg00641.html <QUOTE> So, a question for all: if Alan gets something going, what structures would be highlighted in a programming editor? How would they vary with the type of language? </QUOTE> This came back to me because of a question an adult (non-traditional, as they are sometimes referred to) student in a course I'm teaching asked regarding syntax highlighting in BlueJ. His question highlights the inconsistency or, perhaps, conceptual opacity of snytax highlighting as it currently is (typically) implemented: <QUESTION> As you know when we enter say public void or int the void or int appear red on the screen. string refuses to be any colour except black it`s the same symptom as the backspace issue but thats not the cause this time. </QUESTION> The context of the student's question is the header for a method in a class, eg. public void setFoo(int x) { ... } where BlueJ colors the 'void' and 'int' in red. However, public String setFoo(int x) { ... } will result in 'String' being black. I'm guessing from an expert perspective that BlueJ is highlighting Java's primitive types in *red*, and anything that is a *class* is not. My student seems to have expected things to be colored based on (perhaps) their position, or perhaps their *correctness*---by getting the type "String" correct, BlueJ should acknowledge the existance of this datatype, and therefore color it. I'll ask him when I see him on Friday what he was expecting, so I can compose a "bug report" to the BlueJ developers. However, it's a conceptual bug from the perspective of a novice, and it's with respect to something that we (apparently) have no real research on---the effect of syntax highlighting on the comprehension of code. While this may not matter significantly to experts, right here we have an example of a novice who is confused by the (apparent) inconsistency of the cue. Apologies for ressurecting a dead thread. I guess I'm just wonndering at you how I might argue in support of my "bug report." M ________________________________________________________________________ Matt Jadud http://www.cs-ed.org/blogs/mjadud/ Canterbury Weather: High 48 F / 9 C, Low 44 F / 7 C, Low-level cloud ---------------------------------------------------------------------- PPIG Discuss List ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) Discuss admin: http://limitlessmail.net/mailman/listinfo/discuss Announce admin: http://limitlessmail.net/mailman/listinfo/announce PPIG Discuss archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/discuss%40ppig.org/
