Integrated development environment for program logic formulation
Keywords:
IDE, Program Logic Formulation, PLF, Flowcharting, Logic Formulation, PseudocodeAbstract
Programmers translate the way people do to solve problems into programs. By doing so,
good logic formulation is a must. The study aimed to develop an Integrated Development
Environment (IDE) for Program Logic Formulation to enhance students' skills in programming through flowcharting.
The IDE was designed to include tools for creating and editing flowchart, checking
program logic and expressions, debugging, and maintaining the database of programming
problems. The IDE's interface was partitioned into several sized windows in which all tools
are contained and labelled. The design used icons for flowchart symbols where any one of
these can be clicked and dragged into the provided workspace, file functions such as new,
save, save as, cut, copy, paste, delete, and print, and translator functions such as compile and debug. The translators in the developed system are the compile and debug modules. The
compile module checks the expressions and operations on the flowchart symbols. If there is
error found in the symbols, it produces one from any of the three messages: The flowchart
is syntactically correct, the program produces the correct logic, and it produces wrong output.
The debug module examines each symbol from start until end symbol in the flowchart. There
are two programs running simultaneously: C# (.cs) file and the IDE itself. Behind the scene,
the IDE creates a .cs file consisting of equivalent C# statements for each flowchart
symbol and other C# statements to make the program complete for execution. Each C#
output for process and output symbols is displayed and read on the console command
and passes it back to the IDE's Debug window.
This IDE was tested for its functionality and reliability to determine correct flowchart and
logic. Testing results showed that the IDE provides a working environment where students can
create, save, open, edit, and print flowcharts as well as check program expression and logic.
Based on the results of the evaluation conducted, the developed system gained an
overall mean of 4.62 with a descriptive rating of Excellent, which indicates that the software
material can be a useful tool in training and enhancing the students' skills in logic
formulation.
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