Dear PPIG{er,let}s,
Paola Kathuria and I have been investigating possible techniques for
indexing the workshop papers that are currently available on the PPIG
web site. We propose that an indexing scheme is used by PPIG for
the following purposes:
+ to classify future paper submissions to PPIG, and
+ to classify past papers from the workshops for use on
the web site - allowing your paper (and thus you and
your organisation) to be found easily.
We have done some preliminary work on a draft Psychology of
Programming (POP) classification system; we are now putting
this to the PPIG community for discussion and further
refinement.
The design of such a scheme is clearly a significant step in an
informal community like PPIG, because it can imply boundaries that did
not exist (or were unrecognised) before. The scheme described in this
message is therefore intended as a basis for discussion, including
either suggested modifications or alternative proposals.
This classification is based on a review of the index of "Psychology
of Proramming", on the work of the ACM CHI Curriculum Development
Group (at http://www.acm.org/sigchi/cdg/cdg2.html), on several online
guides to thesaurus construction, and on the visual programming language
classification system devised by Margaret Burnett and Marla Baker
(at http://www.cs.orst.edu/~burnett/vpl.html).
Under most of the topics in the following structure, we have provided
a few examples of items from the index of the Psychology of Programming
book that would be classified within that topic. These leaf nodes are
only for illustration purposes, and aren't meant to be complete. We expect
that the set of leaf nodes would be extended whenever appropriate,
allowing for new theoretical or technical developments, while still
being indexed according to a stable position in the tree - thereby
allowing older publications to be compared to new ones on related
topics. The tree numbering given here is consistent with Margaret Burnett's
VPL scheme, because it seems that the overlap of interest between
the two communities might benefit from consistent bibliographic
conventions (although the VPL scheme doesn't include the extensible
leaf-node idea).
POP: Psychology of Programming
POP-I. Context
A. social organisation and work
- group dynamics
- team structure
- programming economy
B. programmer education
- choice of language
- preprogramming knowledge
- barriers to programming
- training design
- transfer of competence
C. programming application areas
- medical diagnosis
- ill-defined problems
- problem space
POP-II. Programmers
A. types of programmer
- neat / scruffy
- casual / professional
- novice / expert
- individual differences
B. specific activities
- debugging
- problem comprehension
- maintenance
- modification
C. types of programmer behaviour
- change episodes
- browsing
- errors
POP-III. Programming tools
A. general computational concepts
- data structures
- variables
- efficiency
- recursion
- search
B. specific programming languages
- algol
- basic
- C++
- java
- prolog
- spreadsheets
C. features of programming languages
- all cognitive dimensions
- procedural / object oriented
D. other development tools
- data dictionaries
- editors
- visualisation
- query languages
POP-IV. Programming solutions
A. approaches to software design
- top-down / bottom up
- exploratory
- object oriented design
- prototyping method
B. features of software solutions
- user interfaces
POP-V. Research questions
A. cognitive theories
- goal structure
- short-term memory
- scripts
- ACT* / SOAR
B. research methodology
- interviews
- longitudinal studies
- case studies
- protocol analysis
- recall tasks
POP-VI. The field of psychology of programming
A. definition of PoP
B. historical roots of PoP
C. likely future developments
Response guidelines: Discussion of the proposed structure should be welcome
on this list, but please address any specific questions to Paola and me:
[EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Alan
--
Alan Blackwell Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/users/afb21/ Phone: +44 (0) 1223 334418
