Green, T. R. G., Petre, M., and Bellamy, R. K. E., Comprehensibility of Visual and Textual Programs: A Test of Superlativism against the 'Match-Mismatch' Conjecture, Empirical Studies of Programmers, 4th Workshop, 121-146, 1991.  Home/Search   Document Not in Database   Summary   Related Articles   Check

....local ecology. Since so many factors affect the overall fitness, it can be expected that variations on any of the factors will affect the overall fitness of an artifact. So, for example, it is widely known that the fitness of a representation is task dependent (see e.g. Casner [116] Green et al. [273] Peterson [505] or Mulholland [422] and user dependent (see e.g. Good [250] Moreover, because of the so called task artifact cycle [106] the work ecology will tend to change in response to the introduction of new tools. This tool ecology change process is somewhat akin to predator prey ....

Green, T. R. G., Petre, M., and Bellamy, R. K. E. Comprehensibility of visual and textual programs: A test of superlativism against the 'match-mismatch' conjecture. In ESP'91 [743], pp. 121--146.

....by novice and expert programmers by presenting programs for a very short period of time. This may seem non naturalistic, but some have argued that the process may be likened to reading a large program where decisions have to be made about where to expend effort on the basis of minimal information (Green et al., 1991). In this respect we are interested in evaluating the form of knowledge representation used by programmers in an experimental situation which is less prone to the demand characteristics which may exist in other studies where responses may be based upon the participants expectations about what ....

Green, T. R. G., Petre, M and Bellamy, R. K. E., (1991). Comprehensibility of Visual and textual programs: A test of superlativism against the 'match-mismatch'conjecture. Empirical Studies of Programmers, 4th workshop, Ablex, Norwood, NJ.

....rules may be guided by the diagrammatic representation of the process diagrams. 3. 2 Information Distribution The perceptual explicitness arising from information distribution is expected to provide effective visual cues that trigger the recognition of relevant information from different diagrams (Green, Petre and Bellamy 1991). Once such recognition is triggered, the problem solver will be induced into switching diagrams in order to relate and integrate the relevant information among Why are Some Representations (Sometimes) More Effective 5 Visual mapping refers to a perceptual inference that two visual elements are ....

....variety of different modeling formalisms that represent the same information in a diagrammatically different form and organization. The systems analysts the users who work with these diagrams will be able to select particular diagrammatic representations based on the task at hand (Good 1996; Green et al. 1991; Vessey and Galletta 1991) Some tasks may be easier to perform or less error prone with a particular diagrammatic representation. As seen in our study, the use of less effective representations may result in more analysis and design errors. Thus, the ability to select the appropriate ....

Green, T. R. G.; Petre, M.; and Bellamy, R. K. E. "Comprehensibility of Visual and Textual Programs: A Test of Superlativism Against the `Match-Mismatch' Conjecture," in Empirical Studies of Programmers: Fourth Workshop, J. KoenemannBelliveau, T. G. Moher and S. P. Robertson (eds.), Norwood, NJ: Ablex Publishing, Jersey, 1991, pp. 121-146.

....a good (visual) programming environment should carefully combine both skills. Empirical tests suggest that despite their versatility, general purpose visual programming systems have limited usefulness. Green has compared the performance of programmers using textual and non textual representations [48]. Surprisingly, he found that in many cases the programmers using textual representations outperformed the those using non textual representations. Brooks [11] being even more skeptical, concluded that visual programming is temporary hype leading into a blind alley: A favorite subject for Ph.D. ....

....high level substrate exists facilitating their creation. Figure 1 6: Pinball Construction Kit Empirical tests suggest that despite their versatility, general purpose visual programming languages, in many situations, provide little or no advantage over conventional textual programming languages [48]. Domain oriented visual programming systems, on the other hand, seem to be very useful for nonprogrammers but are difficult to build from scratch [40] The problem is, therefore, to find a new mechanism that will overcome the disadvantages of each approach without sacrificing their advantages. ....

Green, T. R. G., M. Petre and R. K. E. Bellamy, "Comprehensibility of Visual and Textual Programs: A Test of Superlativism Against the `Match-Mismatch' Conjecture," Empirical Studies of Programmers: Fourth Workshop, New Brunswick, NJ, 1991, pp. 121-146.

....be an even more intricate process for that they see little hope of achieving. The following discussion refers to these kind of forced programmers, but by no means implies that visual programming should completely focus on them. In the past, some visual programming environments such as LabView [8] and Prograph [6] have successfully supported skilled programmers. Who is the programmer With the next millennium in sight, the visual languages community is starting to take inventory of its successes and failures in order to develop new directions in which research can explore new ideas to ....

....interface suitable for end users. Comparable trap door mechanism in systems such as Rehearsal World [4] or ThingLab [3] also provide access to the underlying programming language Smalltalk in both case but do not include end user interface generators to wrap up new language pieces. LabView [8] and Prograph [6] provide interactors for individual data types (e.g. a push button switch for a boolean type) but do not aid the mapping of entire type signatures. Layer 3: Making Type Interactors Agentsheets allows the design of custom type interactors. A large set of built in parameter ....

Green, T. R. G., M. Petre, and R. K. E. Bellamy, "Comprehensibility of Visual and Textual Programs: A Test of Superlativism Against the 'Match-Mismatch' Conjecture," Empirical Studies of Programmers: Fourth Workshop, Norwood, NJ, Ablex Publishing, 1991, pp. 121146.

....used to evaluate different designs of the same language, i.e. to evaluate a visual programming language without comparing it to a textual language. A study measuring comprehension of dataflow visual programming languages was conducted on five subjects, and reported textual languages to be superior [8]. For visual languages, both LabView 2 TM, a commercial product by National Instruments Corp. and a generic visual dataflow representation were used. For the textual languages, two different kinds of pseudo code were used. However, we do not feel it is possible to accurately measure ....

T. Green, M. Petre, and R. Bellamy. Comprehensibility of Visual and Textual Programs: A Test of Superlativism Against the 'Match-Mismatch' Conjecture. Empirical Studies of Programmers: Fourth Workshop, (J. Koenemann-Belliveau, T. Moher, S. Robertson, eds.), Ablex Publishing, Norwood, NJ, 1991.

....and debugging [23] Indeed, Van Laar [71] reported empirical studies which revealed that both colour and indentation improved program comprehension. Therefore, visual programming languages and graphic representation of programs, designs and domains can aid component understanding, although [27] reports from studies of comprehension with visual programming languages that what a programmer sees is largely a matter of training . To overcome these problems, multiple representations of components, including text, graphics, dynamic illustration and examples may all be necessary. Highlighting ....

Green T.R.G., Petre M. & Bellamy R.K.E., 1991, 'Comprehensibility of Visual and Textual Programs: A Test of Superlativism Against the 'Mismatch' Conjecture', in Empirical Studies of Programmers, fourth Workshop, ed. J. Koenemann-Belliveau, T.G. Moher & S. Robertson, Ablex, Norwood NJ, 121-146.

....or that graphical representation makes better use of human brains because it taps brain s both hemispheres [30] Graphics was considered to be a panacea for problems varying from programming education to software project management. During the recent years the superlativism has slowly settled down [16] and there has even been some quite sharp utterances in the other direction (e.g. 12] p. 1043] To get a bit more profound picture of what is really known of the possible usefulness of program visualizations, we will review the related empirical studies. Before that, we will make a summary of ....

....demand is often immpossible to fullfill. One possible solution to this problem is the use of within subject experimental designs [11] Most of the experiments reviewed above that did consider time as an evaluation criteria found graphical presentations better. However, Green, Petre and Bellamy [16] made also in that case an contradictory observation when they compared micro structure comprehension of a visual dataflow language and of a text based language. Obviously the usability of graphical representations of programs can not generally be certificated. As the matter of fact, graphical ....

Green T.R, Petre M. & Bellamy R.K.E.: 'Comprehensibility of visual and textual programs: a test of superlativism against the match-mismatch conjecture'. Empirical Studies of Programmers: Fourth Workshop. Ablex, 1991, 121-146.

.... languages Forms 3 [Burnett and Ambler 1994] and ICBE [Zloof and Krishnamurthy 1994; Krishnamurthy and Zloof 1995] The representation design benchmarks are a concrete application of several of the cognitive dimensions for programming systems by researchers from the field of cognitive psychology [Green 1991; Green and Petre 1995] The cognitive dimensions provide a foundation that is appropriate to the cognitive issues of representing programs, and provide an increment in formality over previous ad hoc methods. We based our measures on the particular cognitive dimensions that could be applied to VPL ....

....that could be applied to VPL static representations, and added three kinds of refinements: we provided concrete ways of measuring several of the cognitive dimensions at design time, directly focusing them on the static representation part of a VPL. 2: Related Work Cognitive dimensions (CDs) [Green 1991; Green and Petre 1995] are a set of terms describing the structure of a programming language s components as they relate to cognitive issues in programming. The CDs, which are listed in Appendix A, provide a framework for assessing the cognitive attributes of a programming system and for ....

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T. Green, M. Petre, and R. Bellamy, "Comprehensibility of visual and textual programs: a test of superlativism against the 'match-mismatch' conjecture", Empirical Studies of Programmers: Fourth Workshop, (J. Koenemann-Belliveau, T. Moher, S. Robertson, eds.), Ablex Publishing, Norwood, NJ, 1991.

.... that programming is difficult because it requires the precise use of a textual language, and that a system that eliminates language will be inherently easier to use [Smith 1994] However, to date nobody has been able to prove that a visual language is superior to textual languages for all tasks [Green 1991]. To the contrary, often textual languages are superior to visual languages [Green 1992] It seems that visual languages might be better for small tasks, but often break down for large tasks, and we want to make sure that the proposed language will be appropriate for creating complete ....

T.R.G. Green, M. Petre and R.K.E. Bellamy. "Comprehensibility of Visual and Textual Programs: A Test of Superlativism Against the `Match-Mismatch' Conjecture." Empirical Studies of Programming: Fourth Workshop. J. KoenemannBelliveau, T. G. Moher and S. P. Robertson. 1991: New Brunswick, NJ, Ablex Publishing Corporation. pp. 121-146.

....syntax helped them understand the program. In contrast, the one controlled laboratory study of LabVIEW seemingly contradicts Baroth and Hartsough s speculations about visual syntax. Green, Petre and Bellamy pitted LabVIEW s two forms of visual conditional logic against two textual notations (Green, Petre Bellamy 1991, Green Petre 1992) They started from Gilmore and Green s match mismatch hypothesis, which states that problem solving performance depends on whether the structure of a problem is matched by the structure of a notation (Green 1977) This was first established using two textual forms of ....

....since the complaint made by Shneiderman in 1980 that Computer scientists . make broad claims for the simplicity, naturalness, or ease of use of new computer languages or techniques, but do not take advantage of the opportunity for experimental confirmation (Shneiderman 1980, p. xiii) 6 Green (1989, 1991; Green and Petre, 1996) has introduced the cognitive dimensions of notations framework as discussion tools descriptions of the artifact user relationship intended to raise the level of discourse. The following description of cognitive dimensions summarizes a more complete treatment in ....

Green, T.R.G., Petre, M. & Bellamy, R.K.E (1991). Comprehensibility of visual and textual programs: A test of superlativism against the 'match-mismatch' conjecture. In Empirical Studies of Programmers: Fourth Workshop, pp. 121-146.

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Green, T. R. G., Petre, M., and Bellamy, R. K. E., Comprehensibility of Visual and Textual Programs: A Test of Superlativism against the 'Match-Mismatch' Conjecture, Empirical Studies of Programmers, 4th Workshop, 121-146, 1991.

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T. Green, M. Petre, and R. Bellamy. Comprehensibility of visual and textual programs: A test of superlativism against the 'match-mismatch' conjecture. In Empirical Studies of Programmers: Fourth Workshop, New Brunswick, New Jersey, pages 121--146. Ablex, December 1991.

No context found.

T. Green, M. Petre, and R. Bellamy. Comprehensibility of visual and textual programs: A test of superlativism against the 'match-mismatch' conjecture. In Empirical Studies of Programmers: Fourth Workshop, New Brunswick, New Jersey, pages 121--146. Ablex, December 1991.

No context found.

Green, T. R. G., Petre, M., & Bellamy, R. K. E. (1991). Comprehensibility of visual and textual programs: A test of superlativism against the 'match-mismatch' conjecture. In J.

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