Models of programmer behaviour: a comparative study

The authors briefly review three current cognitive models and report on the findings of an experiment involving the collection and analysis of video protocols of five experienced programmers. It is shown that, although there is a significant degree of similarity in the explanation offered by the three models, they focus attention on different aspects of the program design task. Furthermore, the protocols gathered provide supportive empirical evidence for these models. It is also argued that the results of these works need to be consolidated into an explanatory framework. Moreover, the orientation of this framework needs to be predictive rather than descriptive so that the necessary guidelines for software development can be made