[Noisebridge-discuss] Analysing and Interpreting Quantitative Eye-Tracking Data in Studies of Programming: Phases of Debugging with Multiple Representations

[Jason Dusek]

  This paper echoes a notion that came out of a discussion Naomi
  and I had after I mentioned some comments Meryl made in my
  Ruby class. The authors say:

    Overall, throughout the whole debugging session expert
    programmers – who also found more bugs – relied more on the
    textual representation of the program than the less
    experienced programmers did. Output of the program became
    more important than visualization at later phases of the
    debugging strategies of experts, while novice programmers
    tended to rely on the visualization.

  The accompanying graph (page 8 of 15) shows us that, while
  novices spend substantially more time looking at the visual
  representation, both groups spend most of their time looking
  at the code.

  This dovetails well with my changing experience of program
  development: I came to care less and less for visual tools and
  code visualization as I become more comfortable with just
  building the model for myself.

  Perhaps our visual tools are simply inadequate and successful
  programmers are those who can adapt to the paucity of tools;
  or perhaps the mentality required for programming is little
  aided by visuals. I tend to think the latter but the research
  can be read either way.

--
Jason Dusek

http://www.ppig.org/papers/19th-Bednarik.pdf