Greenfoot

Greenfoot is an interactive Java development environment that has been developed primarily for educational purposes. It allows for the easy development of two-dimensional graphic applications such as simulations and games.

Greenfoot is mainly used in the programming teaching at schools and universities. The developers give as a target group " programming beginners from 15 years and older " on. Since the supported programming standard Java is however quite complex and demanding projects may also be implemented.

The main attraction for students is that very quickly and interactively animated graphical projects can be implemented. Simple games are accessible even for beginners after a short time, which often leads to good motivation. The attraction for teachers is that Greenfoot important concepts of object-oriented programming practice well illustrated. Classes, objects, inheritance, method calls and object instantiations are visible and tangible for users. This concrete illustration of abstract concepts support the programming teaching.

History

Greenfoot is being developed at the University of Kent (UK) and La Trobe University ( Australia). Michael Kölling started in 2003 the development. The first version was published in 2006. In the same research group previously also BlueJ was developed.

Since March 2009, Greenfoot is under GPL2 with GPL linking exception.

Infrastructure

The Greenfoot environment has strong support through teaching and learning materials and user groups. On the Greenfoot site are eg tutorials and instructional videos. A textbook is available in English and German.

Greenfoot scenario ( Greenfoot slang for projects) can be exported to the Greenfoot Gallery, where they can be performed live.

Educators can use the so-called Green Room, one ( English-speaking ) forum to exchange material in the teacher and discuss ideas.

Functions

Greenfoot is based on BlueJ, which Greenfoot some powerful functions inherits from this:

  • The class diagram is shown graphically and updated after each compile.
  • Any object can be "inspected ", ie the state of the variables are considered.
  • Functions can be called directly on an object.

There are in Greenfoot predefined classes such as World or actor that facilitate the integration of objects in the graphical user interface a lot. In addition, an object via drag and drop, you can easily incorporate into the surface.

In addition to these beginner- friendly features Greenfoot also offers features for advanced Java programmers:

  • Javadoc integration
  • Possibility of involving other classes and libraries
  • Because the source code of Greenfoot is publicly available, adjustments can be made there as well.
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