Informatica

The emergence of the Semantic Web have revived the interest in knowledge engineering and ontologies. Different paradigms often share challenges and solutions, and can complement and mutually improve each other. This paper presents a simple and agile integration of ontologies and programming on a small scale, and in a down-to-Earth manner by incorporating the ontology paradigm into a mainstream programming environment. The approach is based on metaprogramming, which has been used to internalize the ontology modeling paradigm into the Clojure language. The resulting DSL, Magic Potion, is implemented in Cojure and blends ontology, functional, object-oriented and concurrent paradigms, which is suitable for general-purpose domain modeling, from technology enhanced learning to business.

The paper presents a simple programming language and rewriting system called GENS. It is based on an extension of the λ-calculus called λE-calculus. GENS is a multiparadigm language: it has been used for definition of semantics and for implementation of functional, logical, procedural, and object-oriented languages. It also allows combining different programming paradigm styles in a single programming language.

The results of investigation of computer programs written by school students during the 6th International Olympiad in Informatics are presented. Pascal program texts are analyzed on the lexical level. A certain relationship is indicated between program correctness and usage of some programming constructs as well as readability of the program text. The results are discussed from the standpoint of programming teaching.

A development of algorithms and writing of programs are considered as closely related but not identical parts of computer programming. Some differences between them are important for learning of computer programming, in particular, in distance learning. These differences are identified and discussed from the pedagogical point of view. The arguments for the selection of pedagogical based and cost-effective delivery modes in the case of distance learning are investigated. Practical examples supporting theoretical arguments are given on the activities of Lithuanian schools.

An algorithm testing methodology used in the programming teaching process is presented. Turbo Pascal system is used. Due to systematic use of some features of this system a pseudo-direct execution of algorithms expressed by Pascal procedures and functions may be ensured. The need to use data read and write statements is excluded. This enables a novice learner to concentrate himself on the main actions of an algorithm.