Comparison of Blockly vs Arduino IDE for programming education using M5Stack Core2 ESP32 IoT Development Kit

Abstract

STEAM education promotes programming at all levels of training, being block programming a compatible alternative, including the development of applications with hardware. This paper presents a comparison between Blockly and Arduino IDE in programming the M5Core2 Core2 ESP32 IoT Development Kit for educational purposes. For the study, a program is designed that allows students to read, view a send the data of the inertial sensor integrated in the device. The programming in Blockly is carried out in the UIFLOW application developed for the M5stack cards and the program in Arduino IDE is carried out by installing the necessary libraries for compatibility with this device. The program is evaluated by students of computer science engineering using both programming languages, the participants must answer an acceptance test at the end of the sessions to measure the level of satisfaction with learning. The results show the implementation times of the programs and the scores obtained, determining faster times in the case of Blockly programming and a better acceptance rate that demonstrates the advantages of using this language in programming education.