Towards a programming environment that adaptively suggests examples and corresponding puzzles based on programmer skill

Abstract

Programmers often re-appropriate code or new programming skills they find in unfamiliar code within their own programs [1], [2]. This process enables programmers, including novices, to acquire new programming knowledge while working on their own programming projects. Unfortunately, novice programmers often have difficultly understanding and integrating existing code into their own programs [3], thereby limiting acquisition of new programming concepts found within unfamiliar code. In this paper, I describe my prior work attempting to decrease the burden of learning new programming concepts found in unfamiliar code with automatically generated programming tutorials. Later, I introduce my proposal to create a programming environment that adapts to the skill level of the programmer while introducing programming concepts found within existing code by suggesting example code alongside programming puzzles.