Code Stories

Bachelor thesis (2015)

Contributors

E. Eisenmann (mentor)
Department
TU Delft Computer Graphics and Visualization group (EEMCS) (TU Delft)
Copyright: Sol, R.
More Info
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Published Date

20-06-2015

Reuse Rights

Other than for strictly personal use, it is not permitted to download, forward or distribute the text or part of it, without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), unless the work is under an open content license such as Creative Commons.

Faculty

Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science

Department

TU Delft Computer Graphics and Visualization group

Abstract

Understanding code can be cumbersome. CodeStories strives to provide the tools to make code more understandable by creating a tight coupling between code execution and explanatory elements such as visualizations. Currently CodeStories only supports JavaScript, but extending it with different languages would significantly increase its range. During our research phase we have found that solutions exist that partly solve the problem, though none of the solutions are extensive. CodeStories relies on several third party projects. The main projects are D3 for the visualizations, JS-Interpreter, to make the narratives dynamic and AngularJS as the front-end framework. As is common, the Karma plus Jasmine combination has been used as a testing framework. Some new concepts had to be introduced to keep the application flexible. The CAST has been introduced as a file/folder tree extended with the Abstract Syntax Tree for JavaScript files. Narrative items are the atoms a CodeStory is build up from and VObjects are the higher level objects that represent visualizations. For the user interface we have chosen an approach inspired by interactive storytelling. The end-product fulfills all core features and a little extra. Improvements can be made mainly in the user experience, language support, and the extensiveness of the VObject library.

Files

Final_Report.pdf
(pdf | 12.3 Mb)