A type debugger interactively detects the expressions that cause type errors.
It asks users whether they intend the types of identifiers to be those that the
compiler inferred. However, it seems that novice programmers often get in
trouble when they think about how to fix type errors by reading the messages
given by the type debugger. In this paper, we analyze the user tests of a type
debugger and report problems of the current type debugger. We then extend the
type debugger to address these problems. Specifically, we introduce
expression-specific error messages and language levels. Finally, we show type
errors that we think are difficult to explain to novice programmers. The
subjects of the user tests were 40 novice students belonging to the department
of information science at Ochanomizu University.Comment: In Proceedings TFPIE 2014, arXiv:1412.473
