Abstract

We introduce Code Park, a novel tool for visualizing codebases in a 3D game-like environment. Code Park aims to improve a programmer's understanding of an existing codebase in a manner that is both engaging and fun to be appealing especially for novice users such as students. It achieves these goals by laying out the codebase in a 3D park-like environment. Each class in the codebase is represented as a 3D room-like structure. Constituent parts of the class (variable, member functions, etc.) are laid out on the walls, resembling a syntax-aware "wallpaper". The users can interact with the codebase using an overview, and a first-person viewer mode. They also can edit, compile and run code in this environment. We conducted three user studies to evaluate Code Park's usability and suitability for organizing an existing project. Our results indicate that Code Park is easy to get familiar with and significantly helps in code understanding. Further, the users unanimously believed that Code Park was an engaging tool to work with.

Notes

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Graduation Date

2017

Semester

Summer

Advisor

LaViola Jr., Joseph J.

Degree

Master of Science (M.S.)

College

College of Engineering and Computer Science

Department

Computer Science

Degree Program

Computer Science

Format

application/pdf

Identifier

CFE0006752

URL

http://purl.fcla.edu/fcla/etd/CFE0006752

Language

English

Release Date

August 2017

Length of Campus-only Access

None

Access Status

Masters Thesis (Open Access)

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