David Pritchard

David Pritchard

Which programming error messages are the most common? We investigate this question, motivated by writing error explanations for novices. We consider large data sets in Python and Java that include both syntax and run-time errors. In both data sets, after grouping essentially identical messages, the error message frequencies empirically resemble Zipf-Mandelbrot distributions. We use a maximum-likelihood approach to fit the distribution parameters. This gives one possible way to contrast languages or compilers quantitatively.

David Pritchard, Troy Vasiga

Computer Science Circles is a free programming website for beginners that is designed to be fun, easy to use, and accessible to the broadest possible audience. We teach Python since it is simple yet powerful, and the course content is well-structured but written in plain language. The website has over one hundred exercises in thirty lesson pages, plus special features to help teachers support their students. It is available in both English and French. We discuss the philosophy behind the course and its design, we describe how it was implemented, and we give statistics on its use.