Two studies of factors affecting the programming performance of first- and second year Computer Science students were conducted. In one study students used GIL, a simple application framework, for their programming assignments in a second-semester programming course. Improvements in student performance were realized. In the other study, students submitted detailed logs of how time was spent on projects, along with their programs. Software metrics were computed on the students' source code. Correlations between student performance and the log data and software metric data were sought. No significant indicators of performance were found, even with factors that are commonly expected to indicate performance. However, results from previous research concerning variations in individual programmer performance and relationships between software metrics were obtained. / Master of Science

Thesis(M.S.)--Auburn University, 2006. / Abstract. Vita. Includes bibliographic references (p.79-81).

Object-oriented application frameworks allow the reuse of both software design and code and are one of the most effective reuse technologies available today. Frameworks provide domain-specific concepts, which are generic units of functionality. Framework-based applications are constructed by writing completion code that instantiates these concepts. The instantiation of such concepts requires implementation steps in the completion code, such as subclassing framework-provided classes, implementing interfaces, and calling appropriate framework services. Unfortunately, many existing frameworks are difficult to use because of their large and complex APIs and often incomplete user documentation. To cope with this problem, application developers often use existing framework applications as a guide. While existing applications contain valuable examples of concept implementation steps, locating them in the application code is often challenging. To address this issue, this dissertation introduces the notion of concept implementation templates, which summarize the necessary concept implementation steps, and a technique named FUDA (Framework API Understanding through Dynamic Analysis) which automatically extracts such templates from runtime information collected when that concept is invoked in two or more different contexts in one or more sample applications. The experimental evaluation of FUDA with twelve realistic concepts on top of four widely-used frameworks suggests that the technique is effective in producing quality implementation templates for a given concept with high precision and recall from only two sample sample applications and execution scenarios. Moreover, it was observed in a user study with twelve subjects that the choice of templates vs. documentation had much less impact on development time than the concept complexity.

Object-oriented application frameworks allow the reuse of both software design and code and are one of the most effective reuse technologies available today. Frameworks provide domain-specific concepts, which are generic units of functionality. Framework-based applications are constructed by writing completion code that instantiates these concepts. The instantiation of such concepts requires implementation steps in the completion code, such as subclassing framework-provided classes, implementing interfaces, and calling appropriate framework services. Unfortunately, many existing frameworks are difficult to use because of their large and complex APIs and often incomplete user documentation. To cope with this problem, application developers often use existing framework applications as a guide. While existing applications contain valuable examples of concept implementation steps, locating them in the application code is often challenging. To address this issue, this dissertation introduces the notion of concept implementation templates, which summarize the necessary concept implementation steps, and a technique named FUDA (Framework API Understanding through Dynamic Analysis) which automatically extracts such templates from runtime information collected when that concept is invoked in two or more different contexts in one or more sample applications. The experimental evaluation of FUDA with twelve realistic concepts on top of four widely-used frameworks suggests that the technique is effective in producing quality implementation templates for a given concept with high precision and recall from only two sample sample applications and execution scenarios. Moreover, it was observed in a user study with twelve subjects that the choice of templates vs. documentation had much less impact on development time than the concept complexity.

Application frameworks are tools that enable easier development of web applications and enhance their quality. Because there are so may Java web application frameworks in existence it is difficult at times to choose the correct one to suit a particular application. This thesis examines frameworks from a general point of view. Descriptions of the characteristic functions of frameworks are also covered, along with functions, and the ways in which they differ from each other; and thus it enables the most appropriate framework to be chosen. The thesis also analyses typical representatives of frameworks for certain uses, it demonstrates their activity by means of standardized applications and compares them in terms of practical use.