A pedagogic programming environment for Java that scales to production programming

Abstract

This thesis describes extensions to the DrJava development environment that make it suitable for production programming. DrJava is an effective tool for teaching introductory programming skills in Java, and its simplicity is a desirable characteristic for projects of any size. To better support the development of large projects in DrJava, a carefully selected suite of features has been added to the environment. To facilitate interoperation with professional development environments, a plug-in supporting the DrJava interface has been written for the Eclipse environment. As a result of this work, DrJava has become an appropriate tool for teaching production programming skills in an academic environment, without sacrificing its original goals.