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Wrote literature review. If someone could look at the node.js part, I'd appreciate that.

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Mitchell Plamann
2015-03-04 21:54:08 -05:00
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* Building an In-Browser JavaScript VM and Debugger Using Generators
http://amasad.me/2014/01/06/building-an-in-browser-javascript-vm-and-debugger-using-generators/
DESCRIPTION GOES HERE
In this blog post, Amjad Masad describes how he implemented debug.js, a JavaScript debugger running
inside the web browser. Since we wish to implement a c0 debugger running inside the web
browser, Masad's notes seem to be relevant.
Specifically, this post discusses the architecture of debug.js, as well as various challenges Masad faced
in developing it.
Debug.js was designed in two separate parts: a virtual machine and a debugger. The virtual machine handled
the task of evaluating the JavaScript program being debugged, adding support for stopping, starting, and
analyzing the program. The debugger was the visual interface to the virtual machine, allowing users to
control the virtual machine and see its output.
Masad also discusses challenges he overcame while writing debug.js. These included being able to step line-by-line
through a program, keeping track of a call stack, handling errors and exceptions, implementing native APIs, and
dealing with events. While many of the details will be different when working with c0, we must still consider all
of these challenges in developing our project.
* The Architecture of Open Source Applications (Volume 2): Processing.js
http://www.aosabook.org/en/pjs.html
In Chapter 17 of Mike Kamermans' book The Architecture of Open Source Applications,
he discusses the design of Processing.js. Processing is a Java-based programming language
designed to help teach computer programming in a visual context. Processing.js is a project
designed to run Processing programs in the web browser using only JavaScript.
This was done by writing a own Java-to-JavaScript compiler, and running the resulting code attached to a HTML canvas.
Along the way, the developers ran into several different challenges, mostly due to differences between
the Java and JavaScript languages.
The largest difference between the languages was that JavaScript programs do not get their own thread;
the browser freezes if a JavaScript program tries to run for too long.
We must consider this issue among others for our project.
* Node.js Documentation
http://nodejs.org/documentation/
This is the documentation for the node.js platform.
We plan to use node.js to write the server-side code for our project.
We believe that node is a good fit for our project since we are writing JavaScript for the client
side of our code, so this will let us work in the same language on the server and client side.
Also, we can make use of the existing cc0 compiler to translate c0 source code to the bytecode
our virtual machine will run. This is the same compiler used in 15-122, and integrating it
with our server will make it feasible to run actual c0 source code.