doi.org
A Visual Programming Environment for Learning Distributed Programming
March 2017 • Brian Broll, Ákos Lédeczi, Péter Völgyesi, János Sallai, Miklós Maróti, Alexia Carrillo, Stephanie L. Weeden-Wright, Chris Vanags, Joshua D. Swartz, …
This paper introduces NetsBlox, a visual programming environment for learning distributed programming principles. Extending both the visual formalism and open source code base of Snap!, NetsBlox provides two accessible distributed programming abstractions to simplify the process of creating networked applications: message passing and Remote Procedure Calls (RPC). Messaging passing allows NetsBlox applications to send data to other connected NetsBlox clients. Remote Procedure Calls enable seamless integration of th…