Novice mistakes: are the folk wisdoms correct?

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Novice mistakes: are the folk wisdoms correct?

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Communications of the ACM archive
Volume 29 , Issue 7 (July 1986) table of contents

Pages: 624 - 632

Year of Publication: 1986

ISSN:0001-0782

Authors

James C. Spohrer	Yale Univ., New Haven, CT
Elliot Soloway	Yale Univ., New Haven, CT

Publisher

ACM New York, NY, USA

Bibliometrics

Downloads (6 Weeks): 6, Downloads (12 Months): 88, Citation Count: 34

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abstract references cited by index terms review collaborative colleagues

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ABSTRACT

An evaluation of two folk wisdoms serves to elucidate the underlying or "deep-structure" reasons for novice errors.

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	Beth Adelson , Elliot Soloway, The role of domain experience in software design, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, v.11 n.11, p.1351-1360, Nov. 1985 [doi>10.1109/TSE.1985.231883]
	2	Anderson, J.R.. and Jeffries, R. Novice LISP errors: Undetected losses of information from working memory. Hum.-Comput. Interaction I, 2 (1985). 107-131.
	3	Piraye Bayman , Richard E. Mayer, A diagnosis of beginning programmers' misconceptions of BASIC programming statements, Communications of the ACM, v.26 n.9, p.677-679, Sept. 1983 [doi>10.1145/358172.358408]
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	7	W. L. Johnson , Elliot Soloway, PROUST: knowledge-based program understanding, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, v.11 n.3, p.267-275, March 1985 [doi>10.1109/TSE.1985.232210]
	8	Larkin, J., McDermott, J., Simon, Il.. and Simon, H. Expert and novice performance in solving physics problems. Science 208 (1980). 140-156.
	9	McKeithen. K.B., Reitman. J.S.. Rueter, H.H.. and Hi&. S.C. Knowledge organization and skill differences in computer programmers. Cogtfitiue Psychol. 13 (1981), 307-325.
	10	Michener. E.R. Understanding understanding mathematics. Cognitive Sci. 2 (19781, 283-327.
	11	Pea, R.D. Language-independent conceptual "bugs" in novice programming. 1. Educ. Comput. Res. To be published.
	12	Resnick. L. Mathematics and science learning: A new conception. Science 220 (1983), 477-478.
	13	Schank. R.C., and Abelson, R. Scripts, Plans, Goals and Understanding. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Hillsdale, N.J., 1977.
	14	Shneiderman, B. Exploratory experiments in programmer behavior. Int. 1. Compuf. If. Sci. 5. 2 (1976). 123-143.
	15	Sleeman. D.. Putnam, R.T.. Baxter, J.A., and Kuspa, L.K. Pascal and high-school students: A study of misconceptions. J. Educ. Comput. Res. To be published.
	16	Soloway. E. Why kids should learn to program. Harvard Educ. RPU. To be published.
	17	Soloway, E.. and Ehrlich. K. Empirical studies of programming knowledge. IEEE Trans. Softw. Eng. 5 (1984). 595-609.
	18	James G. Spohrer , Elliot Soloway, Analyzing the high frequency bugs in novice programs, Papers presented at the first workshop on empirical studies of programmers on Empirical studies of programmers, p.230-251, June 1986, Washington, D.C., United States
	19	Spohrer, J.C., Soloway. E., and Poppe, E. A goal/plan analysis of buggy Pascal programs. Hum.-Compuf. Interaction I, 2 (1985), 163-207.
	20	Spohrer. J.C.. Pope, E.. Lipman. M., Sack. W.. Freiman, S., Littman. D.. Johnson, L.. and Soloway. E. BUG CATALOGUE: II, III, IV. Tech. Rep. 386. Dept. of Computer Science, Yale Univ.. New Haven, Conn., May 1985.

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	Ray Lischner, Explorations: structured labs for first-time programmers, ACM SIGCSE Bulletin, v.33 n.1, p.154-158, March 2001
	E. Soloway, Learning to program = learning to construct mechanisms and explanations, Communications of the ACM, v.29 n.9, p.850-858, Sept. 1986
	Christian Holmboe, A cognitive framework for knowledge in informatics: the case of object-orientation, ACM SIGCSE Bulletin, v.31 n.3, p.17-20, Sept. 1999
	Michael McCracken , Vicki Almstrum , Danny Diaz , Mark Guzdial , Dianne Hagan , Yifat Ben-David Kolikant , Cary Laxer , Lynda Thomas , Ian Utting , Tadeusz Wilusz, A multi-national, multi-institutional study of assessment of programming skills of first-year CS students, Working group reports from ITiCSE on Innovation and technology in computer science education, December 01, 2001, Canterbury, UK
	Ann E. Fleury, Parameter passing: the rules the students construct, ACM SIGCSE Bulletin, v.23 n.1, p.283-286, Mar. 1991
	William G. Bulgren , Rose M. Marra , Gregory F. Wetzel, An introductory algorithm teacher, ACM SIGCSE Bulletin, v.19 n.1, p.292-296, Feb. 1987
	Marcia C. Linn , Michael J. Clancy, The case for case studies of programming problems, Communications of the ACM, v.35 n.3, p.121-132, March 1992
	Tom Schorsch, CAP: an automated self-assessment tool to check Pascal programs for syntax, logic and style errors, ACM SIGCSE Bulletin, v.27 n.1, p.168-172, March 1995
	Michael McCracken , Vicki Almstrum , Danny Diaz , Mark Guzdial , Dianne Hagan , Yifat Ben-David Kolikant , Cary Laxer , Lynda Thomas , Ian Utting , Tadeusz Wilusz, A multi-national, multi-institutional study of assessment of programming skills of first-year CS students, ACM SIGCSE Bulletin, v.33 n.4, December 2001
	Barbara Mirel, Toward a more precise definition of task-sufficient information: reconsidering Bethke et al. on task orientation and usability, ACM SIGDOC Asterisk Journal of Computer Documentation, v.15 n.2, p.22-33, September 1991
	Erich Gamma , Richard Helm , Ralph Johnson , John Vlissides, Design patterns: abstraction and reuse of object-oriented design, Software pioneers: contributions to software engineering, Springer-Verlag New York, Inc., New York, NY, 2002
	Lynda Thomas , Mark Ratcliffe , Benjy Thomasson, Scaffolding with object diagrams in first year programming classes: some unexpected results, ACM SIGCSE Bulletin, v.36 n.1, March 2004
	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
	David Ginat, Efficiency of algorithms for programming beginners, ACM SIGCSE Bulletin, v.28 n.1, p.256-260, March 1996
	Des Traynor , J. Paul Gibson, Synthesis and analysis of automatic assessment methods in CS1: generating intelligent MCQs, ACM SIGCSE Bulletin, v.37 n.1, 2005
	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
	Frank Ng , Gregory Butler , Judy Kay, An Intelligent Tutoring System for the Dijkstra-Gries Methodology, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, v.21 n.5, p.415-428, May 1995
	Marzieh Ahmadzadeh , Dave Elliman , Colin Higgins, An analysis of patterns of debugging among novice computer science students, Proceedings of the 10th annual SIGCSE conference on Innovation and technology in computer science education, June 27-29, 2005, Caparica, Portugal
	Orit Hazzan , Yael Dubinsky , Larisa Eidelman , Victoria Sakhnini , Mariana Teif, Qualitative research in computer science education, ACM SIGCSE Bulletin, v.38 n.1, March 2006
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	Robin Abraham , Martin Erwig, Type inference for spreadsheets, Proceedings of the 8th ACM SIGPLAN symposium on Principles and practice of declarative programming, July 10-12, 2006, Venice, Italy
	Michael de Raadt , Richard Watson , Mark Toleman, Chick sexing and novice programmers: explicit instruction of problem solving strategies, Proceedings of the 8th Austalian conference on Computing education, p.55-62, January 16-19, 2006, Hobart, Australia
	Linda Grandell , Mia Peltomäki , Ralph-Johan Back , Tapio Salakoski, Why complicate things?: introducing programming in high school using Python, Proceedings of the 8th Austalian conference on Computing education, p.71-80, January 16-19, 2006, Hobart, Australia
	Leslie Schwartzman, A qualitative analysis of reflective and defensive student responses in a software engineering and design course, Proceedings of the 6th Baltic Sea conference on Computing education research: Koli Calling 2006, February 01-01, 2006, Uppsala, Sweden
	Jerry Mead , Simon Gray , John Hamer , Richard James , Juha Sorva , Caroline St. Clair , Lynda Thomas, A cognitive approach to identifying measurable milestones for programming skill acquisition, ACM SIGCSE Bulletin, v.38 n.4, December 2006
	Danny Kopec , Gavriel Yarmish , Patrick Cheung, A description and study of intermediate student programmer errors, ACM SIGCSE Bulletin, v.39 n.2, June 2007
	Rob Law, An overview of debugging tools, ACM SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes, v.22 n.2, p.43-47, March 1997
	Clyde Matthews, Using formal grammars to encode expert problem solving knowledge, Proceedings of the 37th annual Southeast regional conference (CD-ROM), p.29-es, April 1999
	K. S. R. Anjaneyulu, Bug analysis of Pascal programs, ACM SIGPLAN Notices, v.29 n.4, p.15-22, April 1994
	Jeff Poulin , Will Tracz, WISR'93: 6th annual workshop on software reuse: summary and working group reports, ACM SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes, v.19 n.1, p.55-71, Jan. 1994
	Zoltán Kátai , Katalin Juhász , Alpár Károly Adorjáni, On the role of senses in education, Computers & Education, v.51 n.4, p.1707-1717, December, 2008
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INDEX TERMS

Classification:
D. Software
D.2 SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
D.2.5 Testing and Debugging
Subjects: Diagnostics; Debugging aids
D.m MISCELLANEOUS
Subjects: Software psychology**

K. Computing Milieux
K.3 COMPUTERS AND EDUCATION
K.3.2 Computer and Information Science Education
Subjects: Computer science education

General Terms:
Documentation, Experimentation, Measurement

REVIEW

"Robert McLean Aiken : Reviewer"

This is another valuable contribution in a series of papers by Soloway and his associates in the Cognition and Programming Project at Yale University, who are trying to establish a framework for explaining why novice programmers make certain typ more...

Collaborative Colleagues:

James C. Spohrer: colleagues

Elliot Soloway: colleagues

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