Jinter: A Hint Generation System for Java Exercises

Abstract

Programming novices often struggle when solving exercises, slowing down progress and causing a dependency on external aid such as a teacher, a more experienced person, or online resources. We present Jinter, a tool to generate hints to solve small exercises involving Java methods. The hints are produced taking into account the current state of an exercise and a backing model solution. The aid may refer to spotting errors or missing parts to achieve the desired outcome while taking into account behavioral equivalences of programming constructs (e.g., loop structures, forms of assignment, boolean expressions, etc). We evaluated the approach by surveying 8 programming instructors, finding that about two-thirds of the automated hints either match or are related to those given by instructors.