Microsoft MakeCode: from C++ to TypeScript and Blockly (and Back)

Abstract
Across the globe, it is now commonplace for educators to engage in the making (design and development) of embedded systems in the classroom to motivate and excite their students. This new domain brings its own set of unique requirements. Historically, embedded systems development requires knowledge of languages such as C and C++, local installation of compilation toolchains, device drivers and applications. For students and educators, these requirements introduce unnecessary barriers and restrictions.

Over the last two years, Microsoft has invested in a new web-based programming platform for embedded systems in education, called Microsoft MakeCode (www.makecode.com), in partnership with Lancaster University, who created the C++ Component-oriented Device Abstraction Layer (https://github.com/lancaster-universi.... In this talk, I’ll describe the design principles behind MakeCode and CODAL and our experience with it to date. In particular, I’ll describe how our stack exposes C++ in the browser via TypeScript and Blockly programming APIs, with an in-browser compiler tool chain that produces executable files without the need for a C++ compiler in the core end-user experience. MakeCode is open source at http://github.com/microsoft/pxt

Bio
Thomas Ball, Principal Researcher, Microsoft Research

http://research.microsoft.com/~tball/

Thomas (Tom) Ball is a principal researcher and manager at Microsoft Research. In 1999, He initiated the influential SLAM software model-checking project with Sriram Rajamani, which led to the creation of the Static Driver Verifier tool for finding defects in Windows device drivers. Tom is a 2011 ACM Fellow for ‘contributions to software analysis and defect detection’. As a manager, he has nurtured research areas such as automated theorem proving, program testing/verification and empirical software engineering. His current focus is the Microsoft Makecode platform for programming with physical computers.