Arfath Mohammad, a Wichita State University graduate student, has designed a computer program to assist mechanical and electrical engineering students in building their own computer programs.

Mohammad created the program, named Arfautox, after considering the struggle students have in many classes. Mechanical engineering students often take courses requiring them to develop programs in a mechanical stream.

It was hard for students with no background in programming to learn the software and remember all the coding terms.

“One misplaced semi-colon can mess up the whole program,” Mohammad says. “And most of these programs cannot be used again in other systems.”

Mohammad’s program opens on a yellow screen, offering the user two options: mechanical engineering or electrical engineering. Based on the option selected, a new screen opens offering a variety of questions and information to input.

A student without a background in programming can spend 30 minutes or more developing a single program. With Arfautox, the same program can be created in less than two minutes.

“This makes programming a cup of tea for everybody.”
– Arfath Mohammad 

As his friends and peers have begun using the program, Mohammad added new features and capabilities to support more programming languages. The broad use of the program prevents students from having to train for a particular code.

“I’ve created more than 193 programs using it, and I’m still working on different platforms so that it will create as many as possible,” Mohammad says.

Mohammad plans to make the software free for anyone to use in order to benefit as many people as possible.

“This makes programming a cup of tea for everybody,” says Mohammad.