Search results for "novice programmers"
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A replication study on the intuitiveness of programming language syntax
2023
AbstractIn this article, we present a replication of an empirical experiment that evaluates intuitiveness and comprehensibility of keywords relating to different concepts in programming languages, originally conducted by Stefik and Gellenbeck. Novice programmers face many barriers when learning programming. One of these barriers is syntax, which for many languages is not designed based on empirical evidence. The purpose of the experiment was to provide more empirical evidence on the subject, to find out if the results of the original experiment can be replicated and if conducting the experiment in an environment where English is not the native language affects the results. The results of ou…
Revisiting rainfall to explore exam questions and performance on CS1
2015
The Rainfall problem comprises small tasks that have been used to investigate student performance in introductory programming. We conducted several kinds of analyses to inform our understandings of student performance in CS1 relating to this problem. We analyzed implementation approaches and program errors, as in related studies, and also explored the role of test writing vis-a-vis the most common student error. Finally, using correlation analyses and manual inspection of the exam answers, we studied how well the Rainfall problem served as an exam question. The students' implementation choices reflected their familiarity with particular loop constructs, while the single most common error co…