Identifying Top Java Errors for Novice Programmers

All freshmen at the United States Military Academy take an introductory programming course. We use a custom-built integrated development environment to help teach Java. During previous work, we implemented an integrated semantic and syntax error pre-processing system to help novice programmers decipher the otherwise cryptic compiler error messages in order for them to focus more on design issues than implementation issues. The syntactic errors that we checked were gathered by an informal survey of the current and former faculty members teaching the course. We noticed over the course of the year that there were discrepancies between the errors that the instructors had identified and the errors that the students were encountering. In response, we developed a real-time, automated error collection system that logged 100% of the Java errors in a central database that all users, students and faculty alike, encountered while using the integrated development environment over the course of a semester. This paper discusses the implementation and results of our system as well as the implications for novice programmers