Connecting high and low: Adaption and use of tools to increase students’understanding in programming

Learning assembly programming is often described as a major hard ship for students in computing, making it harder to fully comprehend courses suchas operating systems and computer architecture. This thesis explores the possibility to extend a tool for assembly programming in Mips, Mars, to better bridge the gap between assembly programming and high-levelprogramming languages such as C. Two different approaches are explored,for Mars to execute assembly compiled by a web-compiler, and to execute C code intermixed with assembly in Mars. An extension of Mars was implemented with added functionality for executing one function in C and the possibility to, with some modifications, execute assembly code froma web-compiler. These extensions results in the possibility of Marsbecoming an all-in-one tool used when learning assembly programming, if it is expanded with a cross-compiler for compiling C code into Mips assembly and with extra support for multiple tabs where both C code and corresponding assembly code can be seen next to each other