TY - GEN
T1 - Constructing coding duels in pex4fun and code hunt
AU - Tillmann, Nikolai
AU - De Halleux, Jonathan
AU - Xie, Tao
AU - Bishop, Judith
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
Copyright 2014 ACM.
PY - 2014/7/21
Y1 - 2014/7/21
N2 - Pex is an automatic white-box test-generation tool for .NET. We have established that games can be built on top of Pex to open the tool to students and to the general public. In particular, we have released Pex4Fun (www.pexforfun.com) and its successor Code Hunt (www.codehunt.com) as web-based educational gaming environments for teaching and learning programming and software engineering. In Pex4Fun and Code Hunt, the main game type is a coding duel, where a player writes code in a method to achieve the same functionality as the secret method implementation, based on feedback provided by the underlying Pex tool. Players iteratively modify their code to match the functional behavior of the secret method. The scope of duels extends from the simplest one-line method to those including advanced concepts such as writing parameterized unit tests and code contracts. We have also used the game type for competitions with thousands of players, and have found that it differentiates well between beginners and top coders. This tool demonstration shows how coding duels in Pex4Fun and Code Hunt can be constructed and used in teaching and training programming and software engineering.
AB - Pex is an automatic white-box test-generation tool for .NET. We have established that games can be built on top of Pex to open the tool to students and to the general public. In particular, we have released Pex4Fun (www.pexforfun.com) and its successor Code Hunt (www.codehunt.com) as web-based educational gaming environments for teaching and learning programming and software engineering. In Pex4Fun and Code Hunt, the main game type is a coding duel, where a player writes code in a method to achieve the same functionality as the secret method implementation, based on feedback provided by the underlying Pex tool. Players iteratively modify their code to match the functional behavior of the secret method. The scope of duels extends from the simplest one-line method to those including advanced concepts such as writing parameterized unit tests and code contracts. We have also used the game type for competitions with thousands of players, and have found that it differentiates well between beginners and top coders. This tool demonstration shows how coding duels in Pex4Fun and Code Hunt can be constructed and used in teaching and training programming and software engineering.
KW - Educational platforms
KW - Gaming for learning
KW - Symbolic execution
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84908621685&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=84908621685&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1145/2610384.2628054
DO - 10.1145/2610384.2628054
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:84908621685
T3 - 2014 International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis, ISSTA 2014 - Proceedings
SP - 445
EP - 448
BT - 2014 International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis, ISSTA 2014 - Proceedings
PB - Association for Computing Machinery, Inc
T2 - 23rd International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis, ISSTA 2014
Y2 - 21 July 2014 through 25 July 2014
ER -