Algogators

Joshua Makinen, Seve Ibarluzea, Kiana McNellis, Eric Oswald

Algogators is a graphical programming language used as an educational tool to teach the concepts of the functional programming based of an abstraction of lambda calculus. It uses relatable and colorful models to introduce function reduction concepts in such an easy way even kids can learn! The application is designed as a game where the user is given certain tools (functions) and the challenge is to produce a specific result. In the game users are given alligators and eggs as a representation of lambda functions and parameters, where an egg is a parameter and a family (alligators guarding eggs) are lambda functions. The user needs to construct a food-chain (multiple families), that reduces to the desired output. As a proof of concept, we have implemented several challenges related to logical proofs but the idea could be expanded to such examples as arithmetic and recursion.