Evaluating Programming Performance with Keystroke Characteristics: An Empirical Experiment

This study continued to investigate programming habits based on keystrokes, software quality, and code format. In previous work, we studied programmer´s performance when they were working without pressure. In this work, we conducted an experiment by asking nineteen junior undergraduate students to complete a programming task under pressure. We also used a software tool to record the keystroke frequency and designed criteria to evaluation program quality. The experiment results demonstrate that while novice programmers are diverse in terms of programming styles, good ones tend to control execution in finer granularity and produce more solid code such as exception handling. Source code format seems to be a useful indicator for programming performance. It seems that there is still no direct correlation between the frequency of keystrokes and the quality of programs.