Title :
Individual differences in program comprehension strategies in unfamiliar programming systems
Author :
Ko, Andrew Jensen ; Uttl, Bob
Author_Institution :
Sch. of Comput. Sci., Carnegie Mellon Univ., Pittsburgh, PA, USA
Abstract :
This study examines the effect of individual differences on the program comprehension strategies of users working with an unfamiliar programming system. Participants of varying programming expertise were given a battery of psychological tests, a brief introduction to a statistical programming environment, and a 20-minute debugging task. Our data show three distinct comprehension strategies that were related to programming experience, but individuals with stronger domain knowledge for specific bugs tended to succeed.
Keywords :
human factors; program debugging; programming environments; reverse engineering; debugging task; individual differences; program comprehension strategies; program understanding; programming experience; programming expertise; psychological tests; statistical programming environment; unfamiliar programming systems; Art; Batteries; Computer bugs; Computer science; Debugging; Documentation; Educational institutions; Predictive models; Programming profession; Psychology;
Conference_Titel :
Program Comprehension, 2003. 11th IEEE International Workshop on
Print_ISBN :
0-7695-1883-4
DOI :
10.1109/WPC.2003.1199201
