5.4.1. Pointers Chapter Introduction¶

What you see in this chapter is an extremely early version of our Pointer Tutorial project. We have ambitious goals for this material, but it will take us some time to realize them.

The prose and images in this initial version are essentially a verbatim translation into the OpenDSA system of a document written by Nick Parlante of Stanford University, and used by permission of the author.

This version of the book is focussed on pointers in C/C++. There is a Java version of the book, that is further along in development.

"Pointers and Memory" by Nick Parlante, Copyright 1998-2000, Stanford CS Education Library.

Our goals for this project include the following:

• A series of visualizations to support the prose
• A substantial number of interactive, small programming exercises. Our inspiration for these is the JhavePop, whose authors are collaborators within the OpenDSA project.
• A substantial number of small exercises that show a few lines of code and ask the reader to manipulate a visual interface to show the effects of the code.
• Automated feedback including program visualizations for student answers to the programming exercises. We are currently experimenting with integrating Philip Guo's PythonTutor visualization system to support this.