Does Hedy, the Gradual Programming Language Help Computing Undergraduates to Learn Programming?

Novices sometimes have difficulty in understanding programming syntax. In response to that, Hedy was developed. It is a text-based programming language that gradually imposes syntax rules from human language to Python, a common programming language. Children with Hedy appreciate the use of it and find it easy to learn. Given the benefits, we are interested to see whether Hedy can also help computing undergraduate students to learn programming. A two-year experiment involving two batches of such students (87) was conducted with three questionnaire surveys and one quasi-experiment. Our study shows that although students with Hedy have comparable programming performance to those without it, they appreciate the use of Hedy and understand some Python concepts.