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Developing visual expertise in software engineering: An eye tracking study

  • Program comprehension and the ability to find program errors are key skills of software engineering. The aim of this pilot study was to examine the visual processes of novice and advanced programmers in authentic tasks. Fifteen novices and eight advanced programmers were given eight short pieces of code. Their task was to either identify an error or give the output of the code. Eye movements and keyboard activity were recorded. On average, the novices spent more time reading the code than composing the response, whereas the more advanced programmers started composing the response sooner and spent more time on it. In general, the advanced programmers had shorter fixations and saccades. The results suggest that the advanced programmers are quicker to grasp the essence of the code and able to see more details in it. The advanced programmers had shorter fixations and saccade lengths during the second phase which might indicate the process of chunking.

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Metadaten
Author:Markus Nivala, Florian HauserORCiD, Jürgen MottokORCiDGND, Hans Gruber
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1109/EDUCON.2016.7474614
Parent Title (English):IEEE Global Engineering Education Conference (EDUCON), 10-13 April 2016, Abu Dhabi, UAE
Document Type:conference proceeding (article)
Language:English
Year of first Publication:2016
Release Date:2021/03/11
Tag:debugging; eye tracking; program comprehension; software engineering; visual expertise
First Page:613
Last Page:620
Institutes:Fakultät Elektro- und Informationstechnik
Fakultät Elektro- und Informationstechnik / Laboratory for Safe and Secure Systems (LAS3)
Begutachtungsstatus:peer-reviewed
research focus:Digitalisierung