Conceptual Understanding of Computer Program Execution: Application to C++

Abstract: A visual programming language uses pictorial tools such as diagrams to represent its structural units and control stream. It is useful for enhancing understanding, maintenance, verification, testing, and parallelism. This paper proposes a diagrammatic methodology that produces a conceptual representation of instructions for programming source codes. Without loss of generality in the potential for using the methodology in a wider range of applications, this paper focuses on using these diagrams in teaching of C++ programming. C++ programming constructs are represented in the proposed method in order to show that it can provide a foundation for understanding the behavior of running programs. Applying the method to actual C++ classes demonstrates that it improves understanding of the activities in the computer system corresponding to a C++ program.