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Empirical Studies of Programming Knowledge

ELLIOT SOLOWAY

KATE EHRLICH

Abstract

We suggest that expert programmers have and use two types of programming knowledge: 1) programming plant, which are generic program fragments that represent stereotypic action sequences in programming, and 2) rules of programming discourse, which capture the conventions in programming and govern the composition of the plans into programs. We report here on two empirical studies that attempt to evaluate the above hypothesis. Results from these studies do in fact support our claim.

Index Terms—

Cognitive models of programming

novice/expert differences

program conprehension

software psychology

I INTRODUCTION: MOTIVATION AND GOALS

WHAT is it that expert ...

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