A Study on Learning Support Based on the Frequency of Occurrence of Error Messages in C Language

This paper aims to verify the usefulness of error messages for educational support in programming. We gathered data from a real-life C language learning system and examined error message trends. As the number of students working on tasks and the source code length varied for each question, we calculated the "degree of error." This rate discounts the effects of these two factors for each question. The results showed that error messages are an invaluable tool for education. Specifically, these messages now allow professors to alert learners about the critical points for each question in advance. These results also imply that learning the C language may prove overly complex for beginning students. In particular, we confirmed the possibility that unique elements in the C language specification could be causing errors.