The practice of literate programming is not widespread because existing literate programming systems have some undesirable characteristics such as programming language and text processor dependence and lack of flexible tools for viewing and manipulation of the source file. This dissertation describes the literate programming system AOPS (Abstraction Oriented Programming System) which addresses both of these problems. AOPS is programming language and text processor independent literate programming system. AOPS tools include a hypertext browser, a lister with the ability to select what is presented and what is suppressed, and a filter to extract the program code from the AOPS source file. AOPS introduces the notion of a phantom abstraction that enhances the understandability of the literate program and when used in conjunction with the browser greatly extends the capabilities of AOPS. We also discuss how the design of AOPS supports extension of the concept of literate programming to encompass the entire software life cycle. Finally we describe an experiment which showed that literate programs contain more documentation than traditional programs. / Graduation date: 1993

This thesis examines the effectiveness of a specially constructed computer based support environment for the teaching of computer programming to novice programmers. In order to achieve this, the following distinct activities were pursued. Firstly, an in-depth investigation of programming misconceptions and techniques used for overcoming them was carried out. Secondly, the educational principles gained from this investigation were used to design and implement a computer based environment to support novice programmers learning the Pascal language. Finally, several statistical methods were used to compare students who made use of the support environment to those who did not and the results are discussed. / Thesis (M.Sc.)-University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 1996.

Thesis (B.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 1980. / MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND ENGINEERING. / Bibliography: leaves 88-96. / by Craig Alan Finseth. / B.S.

Balanced codes, in which each codeword contains equally many 1's and 0's, are useful in such applications as in optical transmission and optical recording. When balanced codes are used, the same number of 1's and 0's pass through the channel after the transmission of every word, so the channel is in a dc-null state. Optical channels require this property because they employ AC-coupled devices. Line codes, in which codewords may not be balanced, are also used as dc-free codes in such channels. In this thesis we present the research that leads to the following results: 1- Balanced codes These have higher information rate than existing codes yet maintain similar encoding and decoding complexities. 2- Error-correcting balanced codes In many cases, these give higher information rates and more efficient encoding and decoding algorithms than the best-known equivalent codes. 3- DC-Free coset codes A new technique to design dc-free coset codes was developed. These codes have better properties than existing ones. 4- Generalization of balanced codes -- Balanced codes are generalized in three ways among which the first is the most significant: a) Balanced codes with low dc level These codes are designed based on the combined techniques used in (1) and (3) above. A lower dc-level and higher transitions density is achieved at the cost of one extra check bit. These codes are much more attractive, to optical transmission, than the bare-bone balanced codes. b) Non-Binary Balanced Codes Balanced codes over a non-binary alphabet. c) Semi-Balanced Codes -- Codes in which the number of 1's and 0's in every code word differs by at most a certain value. 5- t-EC/AUED coset codes These are t error correcting/all unidirectional error detecting codes. Again the technique in (3) above is used to design t-EC/AUED coset codes. These codes obtain higher information rate than the best-known equivalent codes and yet maintain the same encoding/decoding complexity. / Graduation date: 1990

Thesis (B.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Physics, 1979. / MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND SCIENCE. / Bibliography: leaves 72-73. / by Owen Theodore Anderson. / B.S.