Exploring Student Misconceptions about Concurrency Using Sonic Pi

As the importance of concurrent and multithreaded programming continues to grow, many universities have incorporated these concepts into their introductory courses. Sonic Pi, a programming language designed for music creation, provides valuable support for exploring concurrency due to its simplified...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Proceedings - Euromicro Workshop on Parallel and Distributed Processing pp. 364 - 371
Main Authors: Delzanno, Giorgio, Guerrini, Giovanna, Traversaro, Daniele
Format: Conference Proceeding
Language:English
Published: IEEE 12.03.2025
Subjects:
Codes
Computer languages
Computer science education
Concurrency Education
Concurrent computing
Concurrent Programming
Education
Federated learning
Misconception in programming
Multithreading
Programming profession
ISSN:2377-5750
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:As the importance of concurrent and multithreaded programming continues to grow, many universities have incorporated these concepts into their introductory courses. Sonic Pi, a programming language designed for music creation, provides valuable support for exploring concurrency due to its simplified multithreading abstractions and its domain-specific nature. In this paper, we outline several teaching experiments aimed at undergraduate computer science students, using an interdisciplinary pedagogical approach that introduces concurrency early using Sonic Pi. The activities consist of code comprehension and code composition tasks in a collaborative learning environment. Our primary research goal is to explore and discuss students' misconceptions about concurrency, and then draw some preliminary considerations and connections to analogous misconceptions in traditional concurrent programming languages.
ISSN:2377-5750
DOI:10.1109/PDP66500.2025.00058