Soloway, E. M., Adelson, B., and Ehrlich, K. Knowledge and processes in the comprehension of computer programs. In Chi et al. [123], pp. 129--152.  Home/Search   Document Not in Database   Summary   Related Articles   Check

....several possible points of relation between reading and writing research, and cognitive support research in software development. Perhaps the most obvious is the fact that text comprehension research has been influential in software comprehension research (e.g. Pennington [498] and Soloway et al. [609]) A similar cross fertilization concerning cognitive models of planning might also be feasible. For instance many models of writing planning (e.g. Hayes et al. 293] strongly resemble programming planning models, which are in turn consistent with the modeling framework presented in Chapter 5. ....

....in the environment and in the problem situation. Cliche recognition. Experienced programmers can rapidly recognize cliched patterns (see e.g. McKeithen et al. 403] Much of the research in relation to this ability has been concerned with the recognition of the so called programming plans [51, 241, 609, 707] and programming idioms [6,611] However the findings probably generalize for all relevant recurrent structures (text structures, control flow structures [266] design patterns, architectural patterns, etc. As one would expect, these structures would need to be relevant to the programming ....

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Soloway, E. M., Adelson, B., and Ehrlich, K. Knowledge and processes in the comprehension of computer programs. In Chi et al. [123], pp. 129--152.

....defining core competencies which maintenance engineers need for their work and for documentation and development standards. 1 Introduction During maintenance and software evolution, software engineers must understand code they haven t written for a variety of tasks. Existing cognition models [1, 4, 5, 6, 7, 10] emphasize cognition by what the program does (a functional approach) and how the program works (a controlflow approach) Unfortunately, validation experiments used rather small programs when compared to the cognition needs of most industrial software. Recently, 12, 13] developed an integrated ....

Elliot Soloway, Beth Adelson, and Kate Ehrlich, " Knowledge and Processes in the Comprehension of Computer Programs", In: The Nature of Expertise , Eds. M. Chi, R. Glaser, and M.Farr, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers, pp. 129-152, c fl1988.

....of program understanding and thus maintenance. The first step in satisfying a maintenance engineer s information needs is to define a model of how programmers understand code. For years, researchers have tried to understand how programmers comprehend programs [1, 2] 8] 12, 13] 15] [16, 17]. The literature provides two approaches to comprehension: cognitive models that emphasize cognition by what the program does (a functional approach) and a controlflow approach which emphasizes how the program works. Chapin s Software Maintenance Life Cycle [3] divides maintenance into sub tasks ....

....that all code is understood at the same level of thorough detail. For large size software this does not seem feasible nor desirable and we need a better model to understand code cognition in an industrial setting. To this end we investigated two existing comprehension models: Soloway Ehrlich [16, 17] which is a top down comprehension model, and Pennington s [12, 13] control flow and functional program understanding models (a bottom up comprehension model) Each model contains a process that programmers use for comprehension, the pieces of information or knowledge which is input to these ....

[Article contains additional citation context not shown here]

Elliot Soloway, Beth Adelson, and Kate Ehrlich, Knowledge and Processes in the Comprehension of Computer Programs, In: The Nature of Expertise , Eds. M. Chi, R. Glaser, and M.Farr, c fl1988, ALawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers, pp. 129152.

....involves both top down and bottom up activities. This led to the formulation of an Integrated Comprehension Model [11] It consists of the following components: 1) Program Model, 2)Situation Model, 3) Top Down Model (or Domain Model) and (4) Knowledge Base. Soloway and Ehrlich s model [7] is the basis for the top down component (the domain model) while Pennington s model [5, 6] inspired the program and situation models. Program, situation, and top down (or domain) model building form the three processes that lead to an understanding of code. Any of the three may be activated from ....

E. Soloway, B. Adelson, K. Ehrlich, `Knowledge and Processes in the Comprehension of Computer Programs', The Nature of Expertise , Eds. M. Chi, R. Glaser, M.Farr, Lawrence Erlbaum Ass., 1988, pp. 129-152.

....process that programmers use, so that appropriate support tools can be developed. Several models of how a programmer actually goes about this learning process are discussed by von Mayrhauser and Vans [23] Some believe that the program understanding process is best described by a top down model [19]. Programmers first gain a high level understanding, and then gradually learn the details. This can be done by making hypotheses about the program, and then testing those hypotheses by further inspection of the code. Others believe that program understanding is best described with a bottom up ....

E. Soloway, B. Adelson, and K. Ehrlich. Knowledge and processes in the comprehension of computer programs. In M. Chi, R. Glaser, and M. Farr, editors, The Nature of Expertise, pp. 129--152. A. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1988.

....needs for each activity. Since these activities all have their own specific objective, one would assume they also have their own most effective method of understanding code. For years, researchers have tried to understand how programmers comprehend programs [5, 6] 21] 24, 25] 28] and [31, 32]. Table 2 summarizes these major cognition models by type of maintenance task and type of model. Comparing them to Table 1 shows that not all maintenance tasks have been investigated for their cognitive processes. On the other hand, we find models that describe general understanding. The objective ....

....were more successful at modifying code (once they understood it) than programmers who took the opportunistic approach. On the other hand, for large programs systematic understanding may not be possible. Strategies also differ in how to match programming plans to code. Shallow reasoning [31, 32] does so without in dept analysis. Many experts do this when they recognize familiar plans. Deep reasoning [31, 32] looks for causal relationships among procedures or objects and performs detailed analyses. Strategies guide understanding mechanisms that produce information. Two such mechanisms are ....

[Article contains additional citation context not shown here]

Elliot Soloway, Beth Adelson, and Kate Ehrlich, Knowledge and Processes in the Comprehension of Computer Programs, In: The Nature of Expertise , Eds. M. Chi, R. Glaser, and M.Farr, c fl1988, ALawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers, pp. 129-152.

....as to how program comprehension is performed. Brooks originally proposed the idea that comprehension is essentially a maintainer reconstructing the mappings that the programmer originally created [Bro83] The program understanding process may proceed in a bottom up[BM82, Bro83, Pen87] or top down[SAE88] manner, or a combination of both[Let86, vMV93] depending on the available cues, the type of maintenance[vMV93] and the maintainer s syntactic and semantic knowledge base[YB93] The process might also be systematic an attempt to understand the entire program, or as needed , where only the ....

Elliot Soloway, Beth Adelson, and Kate Ehrlich. Knowledge and processes in the comprehension of computer programs. In M. Chi, R. Glaser, and M. Farr, editors, The Nature of Expertise, pages 129--152. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1988.

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Elliot Soloway, Beth Adelson, and Kate Ehrlich, Knowledge and Processes in the Comprehension of Computer Programs, In: The Nature of Expertise , Eds. M. Chi, R. Glaser, and M.Farr, c fl1988, ALawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers, pp. 129152.

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