Abstract:

Teaching informatics – being often an introduction to programming - is about spanning the bridge from “information” over its abstraction to its representation on computers as data. As students tend to have difficulties not only in understanding the functionality of computer architectures but also in how processing units work, this paper outlines an approach, which provides a smooth transition from theory to practical implementation. In this context, a web application called “vizmachine” is introduced which simulates a simple example machine consisting of a virtual CPU with a reduced instruction set, a register and memory. The principles of its operations are fairly easy to conceive because every bit of data is visually represented on screen. In fact, using the app spans the gap between hardware and machine code. Accompanying the theory section of the course, it serves as a reference point along the way from programming languages of the 1st and 2nd generation (machine code; assembler) to high-level languages (3rd generation), providing us with a deeper understanding how data is represented and processed in operating systems.

Keywords:

e-learning, Web-Application, Informatics, Machine Code, Programming Languages.