Towards a Web-based program visualization system using Web3D

It is important for programming learners to understand basic control structures of programs adequately. It is even more difficult for novice learners to understand function calls including recursive ones. There are some programmers´ tools such as debuggers that can potentially help learners. However, it is, in general, difficult for learners to familiarize such tools. This paper presents the design of a Web-based program visualization system for motivating learners and for facilitating them to understand workings of function calls. Various Web3D technologies are about to become wide-spread. The system presented in this paper uses WebGL, a JavaScript API for 3D graphics and animations.