Juhua Li, Kazunori Sakamoto, Hironori Washizaki, Yoshiaki Fukazawa, “Promotion of Educational Effectiveness by Translation-based Programming Language Learning Using Java and Swift,” 50th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-50), Waikoloa, Hawaii, Jan 4-7, 2017. (to appear)(CORE Rank A)

More and more programming tools have been created to help people to learn new programming languages. Although the number of tools to support beginning learners has increased, none directly compare different languages. This paper proposes a translation-based programming learning method that supports programming language learning for beginners of a new language who are familiar with a different language by comparing the same code written in the two languages. This allows learners to discover commonalities and differences between the languages, understand the grammar rules, and successfully write programs in the new language. Our method is demonstrated using a web-based programming language translator that translates Java into Swift. We also conducted an experiment to evaluate the educational effectiveness of this method. The results show that programming language translator not only helps learners to understand the grammar, but also helps them to initialize their coding skills than common programming language learning tools.