DrScheme: A Pedagogic Programming Environment for Scheme

Abstract. Teaching introductory computing courses with Scheme elevates the intellectual level of the course and thus makes the subject more appealing to students with scienti c interests. Unfortunately, the poor quality of the available programming environments negates many of the pedagogic advantages. To overcome this problem, we have developed DrScheme, a comprehensive programming environment for Scheme. It fully integrates a graphics-enriched editor, a multi-lingual parser that can process a hierarchy of syntactically restrictive variants of Scheme, a functional read-eval-print loop, and an algebraically sensible printer. The environment catches the typical syntactic mistakes of beginners and pinpoints the exact source location of run-time exceptions. DrScheme also provides an algebraic stepper, a syntax checker and a static debugger. The rst reduces Scheme programs, including programs with assignment and control e ects, to values (and e ects). The tool is useful for explaining the ...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 1997
• Where: PLILP
• Authors: Robert Bruce Findler, Cormac Flanagan, Matthew Flatt, Shriram Krishnamurthi, Matthias Felleisen
• Keywords: PLILP 1997, Programming Environments, Programming Languages, Static Debugger, Syntax Checker