ABSTRACT
This chapter describes an approach to evaluating the usefulness of an Animated Program Tracer (APT) in communicating run-time information to novice Prolog programmers. It presents an evaluation of APT, a dynamic tracing tool for novice Prolog programmers and requires a working knowledge of Prolog. The chapter describes the problems associated with learning to program using traditional methods, discusses the types of information that novices require to learn a programming language, presents an approach to addressing these issues. It aims to determine the type of misconceptions that novices have concerning the action of the Prolog interpreter. The chapter evaluates the success of APT in communicating the dynamic run-time action of the Prolog interpreter. APT was built to present novice programmers with a clear and consistent story of program execution so that they may build an accurate model of what happens to programs when they run.
