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What is eL-CID?

eL-CID was written to help learn to develop programs by viewing examples of iterative development. Iterative development means writing simple programs then improving them step by step. It is a very common technique, but because of its progressive nature, teachers find difficult to demonstrate it on paper.

eL-CID stands for e-Learning by Communicating Iterative Development.

How does it work?

eL-CID takes a program and improvements that a good programmer has written. Then it displays the initial listing, and shows the step by step changes as if the program was being edited in front of the user. At each step the user can stop to observe the changes and run the work in progress.

Data about each program and its improvements is stored in XML format. When eL-CID opens an XML data file, it analyses the data to prepare the demonstration. It then shows the program and iterative modifications.

The possible program changes are cursor move, insert, select, delete, copy, and paste. This is enough to cover all the possible changes made to a text file. I've written this because I am tired of giving students masses of handouts that show successive versions of the same program.

I'd like to make tutorials

You should download the system. The editor is not easy to use, or to learn, just yet! Use the tutorials included as guidelines to the XML format used.

The system is free under the GNU Public License, but you could exploit tutorials commercially - the boring details are in the download.

It doesn't work in my browser

eL-CID has been tested on Safari 1.2 (Mac), Mozilla since version 1.4 and Internet Explorer since 5.5, Opera 9, and Chrome. I would recommend you use a recent version of a browser.

Let me know if you find bugs.

Where can I get more information?

Here are some publications in connection with the project.