Paper Info
Title
An investigation into professional programmers' mental representations of variables
Abstract
Very little is known about professional programmers' mental representations of variables, yet this information is vital in designing effective tools for program comprehension. In order to find out what types of information programmers have about variables and their relations, we conducted a knowledge elicitation study where professional programmers studied programs and the resulting mental representations were elicited using card sorting and interviews. The mental representations were based on fourteen principles that can be organized in four main categories: domain-based, technology-based, execution-based, and strategy-based. Most frequent information types dealt with two execution-based criteria: behavior and utilization.
Year
DOI
Venue
2005
10.1109/WPC.2005.8
IWPC
Keywords
Field
DocType
knowledge acquisition,knowledge representation,reverse engineering,software tools,behavior execution-based criteria,domain-based representation,execution-based representation,knowledge elicitation,professional programmer mental representations,program comprehension tools,strategy-based representation,technology-based representation,utilization execution-based criteria,variable representation
Card sorting,Knowledge representation and reasoning,Computer science,Reverse engineering,Expert system,Theoretical computer science,Sorting,Program comprehension,Knowledge acquisition,Mental representation
Conference
ISSN
ISBN
Citations 
1092-8138
0-7695-2254-8
2
PageRank 
References 
Authors
0.51
8
2
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Jorma Sajaniemi132334.68
Raquel Navarro Prieto220.51