Visual Debugger

Why

The first programming language I really got comfortable with was Java. It was good for learning in high school because its object oriented-ness makes it pretty easy to build a mental model for how Java works internally. That's not to say that there aren't weird quirks like the integer object cache, but on the whole, Java code and data can be broken down into easy to understand models. For AP Computer Science, my teacher used this to create a visual model of a running program on a whiteboard, and manipulate it to demonstrate code execution. When learning C for systems programming in college, I found myself wishing that I could do the same thing, and probably wasn't the only one. In my microprocessors class, there was a whole confusing discussion raised by asking what "type" a part of an expression was in C. Especially once compiled, C doesn't have the same highly compartmentalized concept of types, which makes it harder to reason about in the same way that Java-proficient students were used to.

TODO: use this tutorial to build this site

This project is an attempt to create the kind of tooling I've come to appreciate when working with Java, but for compiled languages, especially simple C programs. Learning C and GDB at the same time just isn't very fun.