Automatic Software Visualization

The problems of reconciling spatial and temporal dimensions of source code have been with us since the advent of programming. Although the notion of visually representing the internal states and actions of a computer is not new but for algorithm animation, at least, it involves a heavy time penalty on designing and implementing the animation. We have attempted to automate this process by providinga general mechanism for parsing and transforming source code in order to yield standard representations. General visualization mechanisms are then applied to these representations. The problems of space and time persist, however, and we have used techniques from the visual arts, particularly theatre and film, to address them. Our results encourage us to believe that techniques such as these are relevant for completely automating the visualization of very large programs.