Project finished!

I’m writing this just after submitting the last PR needed to fulfill my goals for this Google Summer of Code. It’s been an incredible journey, and I’m really proud of the results! The UI feels way better now, and the features implemented look way more important now that they are done than back when they were just thoughts. Let’s review them!

Code editing area overhaul

Before

After

Changes

A custom widget has been made, which is used whenever a piece of code has to be shown or edited. It features line numbering (with customizable offset), highlighting and current line marking.

Block-Text notification area

Before

After

Changes

Block-Text representation has been greatly improved, as it’s the model for the other representations and the target of the main Notification class.

• The coding area has been splitted horizontally to include a notification area.

• Messages thoughout the compilation stages subclass a common Notification class which takes care of its widget representation, while giving children some flexibility to alter it’s behavior.

  • It has a concise title and an icon to quickly identify the issue
  • It also has information about the affected area, showing both exact position and a snippet from the original code which contains the error
  • It also provides some hints to help the user improve/fix their code, so they learn not only how but also why!
• Notifications are marked in the source code, and a double-click on a notification will take you to its location in the source code.

Visual Block notification marking

Before

After

Changes

Notifications are signaled as a red glow in the affected blocks. Hovering the mouse over any of such blocks will show a short description of the error, and some hints to aid the user (just like in the Block-Text area).

Final thoughts

The changes made really improve the user experience, and the environment feels more professional and welcoming. Now that the infrastructure is in place, I expect it to be extended further with more errors and hints easily, so more care is put into the user when LearnBlock grows. However the most important change is the parser rewrite. It’s funny: few people will notice it being different than before, yet the changes made (modular architecture, the class hierarchy of nodes rather than a flat list of tokens and so on) made these changes possible, alongside any other coming in the future!