A Semi-Automatically Assessable Design for a Hands-On Compilers Course

This paper describes the author's experience with ahands-on compilers course designed and carried on in theGerman University in Cairo. The five main points are the courseobjectives, the course organization, the author's approach toformulating the lab exercises – an approach recommended forprogramming courses in general (which is also the maincontribution as it offers a method for “semi-automatic” gradingwithout the need for an automatic assessment system, besidesdocumenting the author's experience categorizing and offering ahands-on compilers course), the small language “invented” forwhich the lexical analyzer, syntactic analyzer and interpreter areto be written by the students (which is the course's ongoingproject) and the adopted grading scheme. Besides, having thecourse’s project seamlessly integrated within the other exercises(as opposed to a separate bulk at the end of the course) is anotherpoint stressed in its design. An idea for a system for automatingthe whole process is proposed at the end