Java--Meets Eclipse - An IDE for Teaching Java Following the Object-later Approach

In this paper, we introduce a new Eclipse-based IDE for teaching Java following the object-later approach. In particular, this IDE allows the programmer to write code in Java--, a smaller version of the Java language that does not include object-oriented features. For the implementation of this language we used Xtext, an Eclipse framework for implementing Domain Specific Languages; besides the compiler mechanisms, Xtext also allows to easily implement all the IDE tooling mechanisms in Eclipse. By using Xtext we were able to provide an implementation of Java-- with all the powerful features available when using an IDE like Eclipse (including debugging, automatic building, and project wizards). With our implementation, it is also straightforward to create self-assessment exercises for students, which are integrated in Eclipse and JUnit.