Automated assessment systems can be useful for both students and instructors. Ranking and immediate feedback can have a strongly positive effect on student learning. This paper presents an experience using automatic assessment in a programming tools course. The proposal aims at extending the traditional use of an online judging system with a series of assignments related to programming tools. Some empirical results on how students use an automated assessment system in a CS2 course are presented. Research suggested that automated assessment systems promoted the students' interest and produced statistically significant differences in the scores between experimental and control groups. (Contains 4 tables and 2 figures.)