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ConEE: An Exhaustive Testing Tool to Support Learning Concurrent Programming Synchronization Challenges

Authors:

Anna Offenwanger,

Yves LucetAuthors Info & Claims

WCCCE '14: Proceedings of the Western Canadian Conference on Computing Education

Article No.: 11, Pages 1 - 6

https://doi.org/10.1145/2597959.2597972

Published: 02 May 2014 Publication History

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Abstract

Concurrent Programming is a topic of importance in contemporary Computer Science, and has been a field of interest for computer science educators for several decades. Many educators agree on the difficulty of teaching Concurrent Programming, and the need for tools to better assist the efforts. We present ConEE (CONcurrent programming Educational Enumerator), a multi-threaded visual simulator based upon the CONcurrent programming VIsualisation Tool (Convit). ConEE complements Convit visualizer and simulator with a code validator that looks for deadlocks and race conditions. It also validates the output by running user-defined acceptance tests. ConEE's exhaustive enumerator validates every possible combinations of the given threads and achieves certainty as to the correctness of a program. While ConEE is limited to short programs with a small number of threads, its objective is to help students grasp the complexity of writing concurrent programs, experiment with a simulator, receive immediate feedback, and reach reasonable confidence in the validity of their code. In addition, ConEE allows instructors to validate their solutions with great confidence.

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Strömbäck FMannila LKamkar M(2023)Using Model-Checking and Peer-Grading to Provide Automated Feedback to Concurrency Exercises in ProgvisProceedings of the 25th Australasian Computing Education Conference10.1145/3576123.3576125(11-20)Online publication date: 30-Jan-2023
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Strömbäck FMannila LKamkar M(2022)A Weak Memory Model in Progvis: Verification and Improved Accuracy of Visualizations of Concurrent Programs to Aid Student LearningProceedings of the 22nd Koli Calling International Conference on Computing Education Research10.1145/3564721.3565947(1-12)Online publication date: 17-Nov-2022
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Strömbäck FMannila LKamkar M(2022)Pilot Study of Progvis: A Visualization Tool for Object Graphs and Concurrency via Shared MemoryProceedings of the 24th Australasian Computing Education Conference10.1145/3511861.3511885(123-132)Online publication date: 14-Feb-2022
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ConEE: An Exhaustive Testing Tool to Support Learning Concurrent Programming Synchronization Challenges

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Published In

WCCCE '14: Proceedings of the Western Canadian Conference on Computing Education

May 2014

87 pages

ISBN:9781450328999

DOI:10.1145/2597959

Conference Chair:
Catherine Maydan,
Program Chair:
Xing Liu

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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SIGCSE: ACM Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

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Published: 02 May 2014

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WCCCE '14

WCCCE '14: Western Canadian Conference on Computing Education

May 2 - 3, 2014

BC, Richmond, Canada

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WCCCE '14 Paper Acceptance Rate 18 of 24 submissions, 75%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 78 of 117 submissions, 67%

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Cited By

View all

Strömbäck FMannila LKamkar M(2023)Using Model-Checking and Peer-Grading to Provide Automated Feedback to Concurrency Exercises in ProgvisProceedings of the 25th Australasian Computing Education Conference10.1145/3576123.3576125(11-20)Online publication date: 30-Jan-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3576123.3576125
Strömbäck FMannila LKamkar M(2022)A Weak Memory Model in Progvis: Verification and Improved Accuracy of Visualizations of Concurrent Programs to Aid Student LearningProceedings of the 22nd Koli Calling International Conference on Computing Education Research10.1145/3564721.3565947(1-12)Online publication date: 17-Nov-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3564721.3565947
Strömbäck FMannila LKamkar M(2022)Pilot Study of Progvis: A Visualization Tool for Object Graphs and Concurrency via Shared MemoryProceedings of the 24th Australasian Computing Education Conference10.1145/3511861.3511885(123-132)Online publication date: 14-Feb-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3511861.3511885
Strömbäck FMannila LKamkar MSherriff MMerkle LCutter PMonge ASheard J(2021)Pilot Study of a Visualization Tool for Object Graphs and Concurrency via Shared MemoryProceedings of the 52nd ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education10.1145/3408877.3439570(1294-1294)Online publication date: 3-Mar-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3408877.3439570
Melo SSouza SSilva RSouza PVos TEldh SPrasetya W(2015)Concurrent software testing in practice: a catalog of toolsProceedings of the 6th International Workshop on Automating Test Case Design, Selection and Evaluation10.1145/2804322.2804328(31-40)Online publication date: 30-Aug-2015
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2804322.2804328

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