Compile Much? A Closer Look at the Programming Behavior of Novices in Different Compilation and Error Message Presentation Contexts

Ioannis Karvelas, Joe Dillane, Brett A. Becker
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引用次数: 6

Abstract

Learning to program is a process that relies on learning theoretical fundamentals as well as practice, and almost always involves some type of programming environment. In order to build effective environments that support good learning for novices, it is important to explore the interaction between novices and these environments. A variety of feedback mechanisms are employed by various environments in use in classrooms today. Some, such as text-based error messages are common to almost all. Other interaction mechanisms, such as invoking the compiler, can vary rather drastically. In this study we investigate the difference between BlueJ 3 and BlueJ 4, two versions of a pedagogical programming environment that offer different mechanisms for compilation and error message presentation. We find evidence that these differences provide users with fundamentally different programming experiences. Specifically, we find that programming process data produced by BlueJ 3 users follow a very deterministic distribution compared to BlueJ 4. Based on this, we present a formula that describes the behaviour of BlueJ 3 users in terms of compilation and error metrics. Conversely, we demonstrate that BlueJ 4 allows users to interact more freely in terms of compilation mechanism as well as how they receive error messages, and their quantity. Which is more beneficial to novices however, is an open question.
编译?在不同的编译和错误消息表示环境中,新手的编程行为
学习编程是一个依赖于学习理论基础和实践的过程,并且几乎总是涉及某种类型的编程环境。为了构建支持新手良好学习的有效环境,探索新手与这些环境之间的交互是很重要的。在当今的课堂中,各种不同的环境采用了各种各样的反馈机制。有些错误,比如基于文本的错误消息,对几乎所有人来说都是常见的。其他交互机制,比如调用编译器,可能会有很大的不同。在这项研究中,我们调查了bluej3和bluej4之间的差异,这两个版本的教学编程环境提供了不同的编译和错误信息表示机制。我们发现有证据表明这些差异为用户提供了根本不同的编程体验。具体来说,我们发现与BlueJ 4相比,BlueJ 3用户生成的编程过程数据遵循非常确定的分布。在此基础上,我们提出了一个公式来描述bluej3用户在编译和错误度量方面的行为。相反,我们证明了BlueJ 4允许用户在编译机制以及接收错误信息的方式和数量方面更自由地交互。然而,哪一个对新手更有益,这是一个悬而未决的问题。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
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