Dashmips: MIPS Interpreter and VSCode Debugger

ABSTRACTExisting assembly programming simulator tools used for educational instruction are stand-alone programs with aged user-interfaces. These tools are antiquated for modern programmers who are accustomed to powerful IDE environments. VSCode has emerged as the go-to in an academic and industry setting. Dashmips is a MIPS Interpreter and Debugger which adds MIPS assembly programming support to VSCode. The interpreter, developed in Python, has a functional design that is easily customizable and extensible for academic instruction specific to a course. Inline Python documentation automatically generates program usage and help documentation for student support. Additionally, the MIPS interpreter is stand-alone from the debugger and can be utilized on the command-line and programmatically via scripting or a Python program allowing integration into auto-grading frameworks. This demo will provide a brief introduction to the features of Dashmips as an educational tool, including simple setup, one-click debugging, clear visualization of register and memory data, and framework for instructor customizations. A step-by-step tutorial for creating a new program and interacting with the debugging environment will illustrate the accessibility of the environment for modern programmers. Information about Dashmips and the Dashmips Debugger can be found at https://github.com/nbbeeken/dashmips and https://github.com/nbbeeken/dashmips-debugger, respectively.