Development and evaluation of a model of programming errors

Author

Ko, Andrew J. ; Myers, Brad A.

Author_Institution

Sch. of Comput. Sci., Carnegie Mellon Univ., Pittsburgh, PA, USA

fYear

2003

fDate

28-31 Oct. 2003

Firstpage

7

Lastpage

14

Abstract

Models of programming and debugging suggest many causes of errors, and many classifications of error types exist. Yet, there has been no attempt to link causes of errors to these classifications, nor is there a common vocabulary for reasoning about such causal links. This makes it difficult to compare the abilities of programming styles, languages, and environments to prevent errors. To address this issue, this paper presents a model of programming errors based on past studies of errors. The model was evaluated with two observational of Alice, an event-based programming system, revealing that most errors were due to attentional and strategic problems in implementing algorithms, language constructs, and uses of libraries. In general, the model can support theoretical, design, and educational programming research.

Keywords

program debugging; programming; Alice system; debugging model; error classification; event-based programming system; programming error model; Computer errors; Computer science; Debugging; Error analysis; Humans; Libraries; Programming profession; Runtime; Testing; Vocabulary;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Human Centric Computing Languages and Environments, 2003. Proceedings. 2003 IEEE Symposium on

Print_ISBN

0-7803-8225-0

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/HCC.2003.1260196

Filename

1260196