Declarative program development in Prolog with GUPU

TL;DR

GUPU is a specialized, side-effect free environment for teaching Prolog that guides students through specification, implementation, and debugging with innovative diagnostic, visualization, and error localization tools.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive environment with integrated diagnostic, visualization, and slicing techniques to support all phases of Prolog program development in educational settings.

Findings

Supports specification with reference implementations and diagnostics

Provides immediate feedback through test cases and visualization tools

Uses slicing techniques for error localization

Abstract

We present GUPU, a side-effect free environment specialized for programming courses. It seamlessly guides and supports students during all phases of program development, covering specification, implementation, and program debugging. GUPU features several innovations in this area. The specification phase is supported by reference implementations augmented with diagnostic facilities. During implementation, immediate feedback from test cases and from visualization tools helps the programmer's program understanding. A set of slicing techniques narrows down programming errors. The whole process is guided by a marking system.