Abstract
We present CGRAPHIC, an original software for learning the basic concepts of implementing (possibly educational) software. CGRAPHIC is being used in first‐year university courses in engineering studies, and its main aim is to complement the role of the teacher and improve the quality of teaching foundations of programming. CGRAPHIC is a virtual tutor, a programming textbook (online), and an interpreter as well as a debugger of the programming language C, and can be executed on any navigator program in Internet or locally. This software enables different levels of learning (theoretical and practical) and allows the student to study—intuitively, graphically, and gradually—the principles of programming that are crucial to developing new software. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Comput Appl Eng Educ 11: 167–178, 2003; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com); DOI 10.1002/cae.10048