An empirical study of novice program comprehension in the imperative and object-oriented styles

Subscribe (Full Service)


	Search: The ACM Digital Library The Guide

	Feedback

An empirical study of novice program comprehension in the imperative and object-oriented styles

Full text

Pdf (1.51 MB)

Source

Papers presented at the seventh workshop on Empirical studies of programmers table of contents

Alexandria, Virginia, United States

Pages: 124 - 139

Year of Publication: 1997

ISBN:0-89791-992-0

Authors

Vennila Ramalingam	Computer Science and Engineering Department, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, NE
Susan Wiedenbeck	Computer Science and Engineering Department, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, NE

Sponsor

ACM: Association for Computing Machinery

Publisher

ACM New York, NY, USA

Bibliometrics

Downloads (6 Weeks): 8, Downloads (12 Months): 78, Citation Count: 12

Additional Information:

references cited by index terms collaborative colleagues

Tools and Actions:	Review this Article Save this Article to a Binder Display Formats: BibTeX EndNote ACM Ref

DOI Bookmark:	Use this link to bookmark this Article: http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/266399.266411 What is a DOI?

REFERENCES

Note: OCR errors may be found in this Reference List extracted from the full text article. ACM has opted to expose the complete List rather than only correct and linked references.

	1	David Bergantz , Johnette Hassell, Information relationships in PROLOG programs: how do programmers comprehend functionality?, International Journal of Man-Machine Studies, v.35 n.3, p.313-328, Sept. 1991 [doi>10.1016/S0020-7373(05)80131-2]
	2	G Booch, Object-oriented development, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, v.12 n.2, p.211-221, Feb. 1986
	3	A. Borgida , S. Greenspan , J. Mylopoulos, Knowledge representations as the basis for requirements specifications, Readings in artificial intelligence and software engineering, Morgan Kaufmann Publishers Inc., San Francisco, CA, 1986
	4	Brooks, R. (1983). Towards a theory of the comprehension of computer programs. International Journal of Man-Machine Studies, 18, 543-554.
	5	Jean-Marie Burkhardt , Françoise Détienne , Susan Wiedenbeck, Mental Representations Constructed by Experts and Novices in Object-Oriented Program Comprehension, Proceedings of the IFIP TC13 Interantional Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, p.339-346, July 14-18, 1997
	6	Corritore, C. L. and Wiedenbeck, S. (1991). What do novices learn during program comprehension? International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction, 3(2), 199- 222.
	7	D J. Gilmore , T R.G. Green, Comprehension and recall of miniature programs, International Journal of Man-Machine Studies, v.21 n.1, p.31-48, July 1984 [doi>10.1016/S0020-7373(84)80037-1]
	8	Green, T. R. G., Petre, M., and Bellamy, R. K.E. (1991). Comprehensibility of visual and textual programs" a test of superlativism against the'match-mismatch' conjecture. In J. Koenemann-Belliveau, T. G. Moher, and S. P. Robertson (Eds.), Empirical Studies of Programmers: Fourth Workshop (pp. 121-146). Norwood, NI: Ablex.
	9	Good, J. (1996). The 'fight' tool for the task: an investigation of external representations, program abstractions and task requirements. In W. D. Gray and D. A. Boehm-Davis (Eds,), Empirical Studies of Programmers: Sixth Workshop (pp. 77-98). Norwood, NJ: Ablex.
	10	P. N. Johnson-Laird, Mental models: towards a cognitive science of language, inference, and consciousness, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1986
	11	Jürgen Koenemann , Scott P. Robertson, Expert problem solving strategies for program comprehension, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems: Reaching through technology, p.125-130, April 27-May 02, 1991, New Orleans, Louisiana, United States [doi>10.1145/108844.108863]
	12	David C. Littman , Jeannine Pinto , Stanley Letovsky , Elliot Soloway, Mental models and software maintenance, Papers presented at the first workshop on empirical studies of programmers on Empirical studies of programmers, p.80-98, June 1986, Washington, D.C., United States
	13	Mills, B. C., Diehl, V. A., Birkmire, D. P. & Mou, L-C. (1995). Reading procedural texts: effects of purpose for reading and predictions of reading comprehension models. Discourse Processes, 20, 79-107.
	14	Moher, T. G., Mak, D. C., Blumenthal, B., and Leventhal, L.M. (1993). Comparing the comprehensibility of textual and graphical programs: the case for Petri nets. In C. R. Cook, J. C. Scholtz, and 3". C. Spohrer (Eds.), Empirical Studies of Programmers: Fifth Workshop (pp. 137-161). Norwood, N}': Ablex.
	15	Nancy Pennington, Comprehension strategies in programming, Empirical studies of programmers: second workshop, Ablex Publishing Corp., Norwood, NJ, 1987
	16	Pennington, N. (1987b). Stimulus Structures and Mental Representations in Expert Comprehension of Computer Programs. Cognitive Psychology, 19, 295-341.
	17	Rosson, M. B., and Alpert, S.R. (1990). The cognitive consequences of object-oriented design. Human-Computer Interaction, 5(4), 345-379.
	18	Schmalhofer, F., and Glavanov, D. (1986). Three Components of Understanding a Pro~ammer's Manual Verbatim, Propositional, and Situational Representations. Journal of Memory and Language, 25, 295-313.
	19	Soloway, E. and Ehrlich, K. (1984). Empirical studies of programming knowledge. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, SE-10(5), 595-609.
	20	Soloway, E., Ehrlich, K., Bonar, J., and Greenspan, J. (1982). What do novices know about programming? In A. Badre and B. Shneiderman (Eds.), Directions in Human-Computer Interaction (pp. 27-54). Norwood, NI: Ablex.
	21	van Dijk, T. A. and Kintsch, W. (1983). Strategies of Discourse Comprehension. New York: Academic.
	22	Wiedenbeck, S., Ramalingam, V., Sarasamma, S., and Corritore, C.L. (1997). A Comparison of the Comprehension of Object-Oriented and Procedural Programs by Novice Programmers. Departmental Report, Computer Science and Engineering Department, University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

CITED BY 12

	Ann E. Fleury, Programming in Java: student-constructed rules, ACM SIGCSE Bulletin, v.32 n.1, p.197-201, Mar. 2000
	Ann E. Fleury, Encapsualtion and reuse as viewed by java students, ACM SIGCSE Bulletin, v.33 n.1, p.189-193, March 2001
	Roger Box , Michael Whitelaw, Experiences when migrating from structured analysis to object-oriented modelling, Proceedings of the Australasian conference on Computing education, p.12-18, December 2000, Melbourne, Australia
	Ken Halland , Katherine Malan, Reflections by teachers learning to program, Proceedings of the 2003 annual research conference of the South African institute of computer scientists and information technologists on Enablement through technology, p.165-172, September 17-19, 2003
	Adrienne Decker, A tale of two paradigms, Journal of Computing Sciences in Colleges, v.19 n.2, p.238-246, December 2003
	Judith Good , Paul Brna, Program comprehension and authentic measurement: a scheme for analysing descriptions of programs, International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, v.61 n.2, p.169-185, August 2004
	Randy Stein , Susan E. Brennan, Another person's eye gaze as a cue in solving programming problems, Proceedings of the 6th international conference on Multimodal interfaces, October 13-15, 2004, State College, PA, USA
	Charmain Cilliers , André Calitz , Jéan Greyling, The effect of integrating an Iconic programming notation into CS1, Proceedings of the 10th annual SIGCSE conference on Innovation and technology in computer science education, June 27-29, 2005, Caparica, Portugal
	Janet Rountree , Nathan Rountree , Anthony Robins , Robert Hannah, Observations of student competency in a CS1 course, Proceedings of the 7th Australasian conference on Computing education, p.145-149, January 01, 2005, Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia
	Raymond Lister , Anders Berglund , Tony Clear , Joe Bergin , Kathy Garvin-Doxas , Brian Hanks , Lew Hitchner , Andrew Luxton-Reilly , Kate Sanders , Carsten Schulte , Jacqueline L. Whalley, Research perspectives on the objects-early debate, ACM SIGCSE Bulletin, v.38 n.4, December 2006
	Kate Sanders , Jonas Boustedt , Anna Eckerdal , Robert McCartney , Jan Erik Moström , Lynda Thomas , Carol Zander, Student understanding of object-oriented programming as expressed in concept maps, ACM SIGCSE Bulletin, v.40 n.1, March 2008
	Linda Mannila , Michael de Raadt, An objective comparison of languages for teaching introductory programming, Proceedings of the 6th Baltic Sea conference on Computing education research: Koli Calling 2006, February 01-01, 2006, Uppsala, Sweden