The objective of this study was to determine whether computer programmers would organize reserved words by programming language or by conceptual category, when given an opportunity to use either strategy. Twenty-seven participants, stratified by programming experience level (novice, intermediate, and expert), were given sixteen reserved words on index cards. The words were taken from four programming languages, as well as six conceptual categories. Participants were given both a recognition and a recall task. Organizing the words by conceptual category enabled the expert programmers to perform significantly better on the recall task than experts who organized by language. In addition, they made fewer recognition errors, and had more structured recall, in terms of recalling the words by the categories in which they were studied. Expert computer programmers, similar to natural language multilinguals, can recall more (reserved) words when they are organized by conceptual categories rather than by (programming) language. It is hypothesized that this is because human memory is organized in a fundamentally interdependent (across languages) manner in many domains other than natural language, such as computer programming. / Master of Arts

by Chan Chi-ming and Mak Pak Yick, Philip. / Thesis (M.B.A.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1991. / Bibliography: leaves [169-170] / ACKNOWLEDGEMENT --- p.i / ABSTRACT --- p.ii / TABLE OF CONTENTS --- p.iii / CHAPTER / Chapter 1. --- INTRODUCTION --- p.1 / Objectives --- p.1 / Background and why this topic was chosen --- p.2 / The Solution - Training --- p.7 / Computer Training --- p.8 / Chapter 2. --- BACKGROUND OF THE COMPUTER INDUSTRY AND COMPUTER TRAINING IN HONG KONG --- p.10 / The Computer Industry --- p.10 / Computer Training in Hong Kong --- p.12 / Chapter 3. --- METHODOLOGY --- p.21 / Literature Survey --- p.22 / Problem statement --- p.24 / Theoretical Framework --- p.24 / Field Survey Design Details --- p.25 / Chapter 4. --- DATA ANALYSIS OF THE SURVEY --- p.32 / Data Analysis Method --- p.32 / Feel for Data --- p.32 / Testing and Analysis --- p.55 / Chapter 5. --- BUSINESS OPPORTUNITIES --- p.76 / High Demand for Training --- p.76 / Computer Aided Training will be a growth area --- p.77 / Conclusion --- p.78 / APPENDIX I --- p.80 / APPENDIX II --- p.89 / APPENDIX III --- p.101

The psychological characteristics of programmers are believed to be important determinants of programming productivity. However, little evidence is available to support this contention. This investigation, motivated by the lack of such evidence, was concerned with determining the influence of the programmer's cognitive complexity (differentiation and integration) and experience on comprehending and modifying programs of different levels of complexity. Data were collected from ninty-three graduate and undergraduate students in a classroom experimental setting. In the first phase of the experiment, a background questionnaire was administered in order to collect experience and other demographic information. Also, a domain-specific Role Construct Repertory (REP) Test was administered to collect cognitive complexity information. In the second phase, the subjects were randomly assigned to either the program comprehension group or to the program modification group. Both groups used two COBOL programs of differing levels of complexity to do comprehension and modification exercises. Three sets of hypotheses were tested. The first set of hypotheses was designed to evaluate the direction and strength of the relationship between cognitive complexity and program comprehension and modification. The second set of hypotheses was designed to evaluate the combined influence of cognitive complexity and program complexity on the comprehension and modification of the programs. The third set of hypotheses was designed to evaluate the moderating effect of experience on the relationship of cognitive complexity to program comprehension and modification. Cognitive integration was found to have a significant and positive nonlinear relationship only with the relatively complex program modification scores. The subjects who were ranked high in cognitive integration performed better than those ranked low in modifying the relatively complex program; but they performed the same in modifying the relatively simple program. Cognitive differentiation was found to have no significant relationship with either comprehension scores or modification scores. Experience of the subjects did not significantly moderate the relationship of cognitive complexity and program comprehension and modification.

Photocopy of typescript. / Digitized by Kansas Correctional Industries

Through mixed-methods research, this dissertation details the regionally variegated and place-specific software production processes in three second-tier US software regions. I focus on the relationship between different industrial, firm, and worker production configurations and broad-based economic development, prosperity, and inequality. I develop four main empirical findings. First, I argue for a periodization of software production that tracks with changes in software laboring activity, software technologies, and wage-employment relationships. Through a GIS-based method, I use the IPUMS-USA to extensively measure the amount and type of software labor in industries across the US between 1970 and 2015. I map the uneven geography of software labor that produces different clusters of various software occupations. Second, I argue that between each software period, locational windows provide an opportunity for second-tier software regions to challenge Silicon Valley. I combine the IPUMS-USA dataset with interviews of software workers to analyze forms of regionally specific modes of production in Seattle, Washington, Portland, Oregon, and Austin, Texas. I trace how software production in these three cities evolves between each software period, taking on different spatial configurations, firm strategies, labor practices, and technological characteristics. Third, I argue that software labor is hyper-sensitive to deskilling because of software production activity produces software. I combine occupation classifications and interviews with software workers to interrogate the ever-present need for software workers to learn the newest development practices and software languages as firms seek to automate software production. I define five key moments since the 1970s that exemplify software labor market dualization and segmentation. Using interviews, and conference observations, I find that community-based organizations and labor market intermediaries locally mitigate the structural tendencies toward labor market dualization and segmentation. I argue that without intervention, the layered and bifurcated labor market for software production reproduces existing inequalities. Further, the organizational, technological, and spatial changes in software production reduce the potential for equitable wealth production. Ultimately, this dissertation argues for the importance of labor organizing in software, contributing empirical and theoretical work in a lineage of regional-based industrial restructuring literature. The regional and industrial geographies produced by and out of software production are significant forces in the economy at regional and national scales. I connect this process to the feminization of other industries, noting how the technical nature of software production structurally genders and racializes the labor force. Leveraging a labor feminization framework highlights the flexibilization of labor and the rift between the pace of software skill building and technological development. Both software production and regional economies are necessary entry points to understand new capitalist relations. Understanding these new relations thus requires examining how configurations of software production differ across regions, how they impact industry and regional economic development outcomes, and how they weaken or strengthen actions of local workers, local organizations, and local firms. These processes offer a glimpse into how the contemporary moment of production differs from other moments of production. Armed with this understanding, this research will be able to connect industry and regional economic-development outcomes to regionally specific modes of production, answering relevant software-based economic-development policy questions.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Oregon State University, 2010. / Printout. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 88-93). Also available on the World Wide Web.

Increasing pressure from national government to improve throughput at South African tertiary education institutions presents challenges to educators of introductory programming courses. In response, educators must adopt effective methods and strategies that encourage novice programmers to be successful in such courses. An approach that seeks to increase and maintain satisfactory throughput is the modification of the teaching model in these courses by adjusting presentation techniques. This thesis investigates the effect of integrating an experimental iconic programming notation and associated development environment with existing conventional textual technological support in the teaching model of a tertiary level introductory programming course. The investigation compares the performance achievement of novice programmers using only conventional textual technological support with that of novice programmers using the integrated iconic and conventional textual technological support. In preparation for the investigation, interpretation of existing knowledge on the behaviour of novice programmers while learning to program results in a novel framework of eight novice programmer requirements for technological support in an introductory programming course. This framework is applied in the examination of existing categories of technological support as well as in the design of new technological support for novice programmers learning to program. It thus provides information for the selection of existing and the design of new introductory programming technological support. The findings of the investigation suggest strong evidence that performance achievement of novice programmers in a tertiary level introductory programming course improves significantly with the inclusion of iconic technological support in the teaching model. The benefits are particularly evident in the portion of the novice programmer population who have been identified as being at risk of being successful in the course. Novice programmers identified as being at risk perform substantially better when using iconic technological support concurrently with conventional textual technological support than their equals who use only the latter form. Considerably more at risk novice programmers using the integrated form of technological support are in fact successful in the introductory programming course when compared with their counterparts who use conventional textual technological support only. The contributions of this thesis address deficiencies existing in current documented research. These contributions are primarily apparent in a number of distinct areas, namely: • formalisation of a novel framework of novice programmer requirements for technological support in an introductory programming course; • application of the framework as a formal evaluation technique; • application of the framework in the design of a visual iconic programming notation and development environment; • enhancement of existing empirical evidence and experimental research methodology typically applied to studies in programming; as well as • a proposal for a modified introductory programming course teaching model. The thesis has effectively applied substantial existing research on the cognitive model of the novice programmer as well as that on experimental technological support. The increase of throughput to a recommended rate of 75 percent in the tertiary level introductory programming course at the University of Port Elizabeth is attributed solely to the incorporation of iconic technological support in the teaching model of the course.

The problem with which this investigation is concerned is an analysis of errors in looping and assignment made by novice assembly language computer programmers. This analysis is made after subjects write three computer programs. The verbal definition of the problem for each program specifies, without naming, either a for, while, or repeat looping structure. The purposes of the study are the following; to determine whether using the appropriate looping structure is related to writing a correct program; to determine the incidence of assignment errors in incorrect programs; to determine the degree of relationship between mathematical aptitude, and the type of assignment errors made; to determine the degree of relationship between use of the appropriate looping structure and mathematical, verbal, and scholastic aptitude; to determine the degree of relationship between gender and use of the appropriate looping structure, and to determine the degree of relationship between gender and the number of assignment errors.

Subjects were 38 computer programers employed in a national food-retailing corporation. A job analysis provided a basis for criteria development and served to guide the selection of predictors. Ratings of each programmer's job performance by his immediate supervisor, and scores on such tests as the Computer Programer Aptitude Battery (CPAB), clerical tests, and supervisory judgment test were obtained. Relationships between tests and criteria were examined to find the best test combination for predicting programming performance. Statistical treatment of data included a principal components analysis of the criteria and a multiple linear regression analysis. A weighted combination of the CPAB Reasoning, a test of clerical ability, and supervisory judgment test was found to be highly correlated with performance (R = .60).

This study evaluates three different ways of structuring a software library for an object-oriented system. The traditional class/subclass tree (CIS) is used as well as two methods from the mental model literature: hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA) of sorting data and modal block clustering (MBC) of attribute rating data (Shurtleff, Jenkins, and Sams, 1988; Tullis, 1985). Also examined in this context are two software metrics: depth-in- inheritance-tree (D IT) and response-for-class (RFC) (Lei, 1991, 1993). These two metrics had been found by Lei to correlate with the ease of maintenance of software. It was conjectured that they might also be useful in the study of mental model methods for software. Finally, student and professional programmers are explicitly compared. There has been much debate on the applicability of software-related data generated from student subjects but little research on the topic. The results indicate that subject performance with the MBC representation was worse than with the CIS representation. Also found was that performance with the HCA representation was not sufficiently better to justify the effort involved in creating the new representation. Student programmers were found in this study to be no worse than professional programmers and thus appear to be acceptable substitutes for professional programmers in a class-based search task. This study's results indicate that student response time to locate a class could be used as the lower boundary for professional programmer class locating time. The student error rates, however, could be used as the upper boundary for professional programmer error rate performance in class locating tasks. A "middle" problem was also found. Classes 1n the middle of a library representation proved to be more difficult to locate as measured by time and error rate. Finally, a higher RFC was found to increase search time for a class when it was in the middle of a library representation. A higher RFC also reduced programmer reusability ratings of a class and the programmer's confidence in the reusability rating. / Ph. D.