5.1. 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.

"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.
• 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.