Ruven,
>If most or even some programming is done by simple methods, with the
>observed behavioral differences being mostly
>a product of the enviroment, then we ought to observe the following:
>
>For some/most problems, there is no difference between experienced and
>novice programmers -
>there's no knowledge that the ant carries from beach to beach.
>Furthermore, we ought to see little individual difference among programmers.
>If methods are simple, everyone ought to be able to learn them with
>roughly equal ease.
Or equal difficulty.
We should also observe them making the same mistakes.
I am reading "Mind Bugs: The origins or procedural misconceptions" by
Kurt Vanlehn at the moment. Who would have thought that a 250 page
book on the mistake people (mostly children) make when performing
simple subtraction was possible. He found 134 distinct problems, of
which 35 occur more than once and builds a model to explain them.
There is certainly some commonality of procedural/declarative knowledge
errors made by programmers. If somebody can get a PhD and spend
10 years analysing the results of subtraction errors, a model of programmer
error might be a century or so away.
One of Vanlehns arguments is that if people have errors in common and
these can be modeled then the chances are they are using similar
internal representations.
I am in the business of looking for errors in peoples code. There is
commonality. Whether this can be modeled reliable and whether I
what I am seeing is anything more than useful coincidences is
another matter.
>In fact, the experimental results are just the opposite.
The paper: "The 28:1 Grant/Sackman legend is misleading, or: How large is
interpersonal difference really?" by Lutz Prechelt, wwwipd.ira.uka.de/EIR
Technical Report 1999-18
will be of interest to people.
>The differences between novices and experienced programmers,
>or, even, across programmers who claim an equal number of years of
>experience,
>are huge, far greater than in almost any other cogntive activity.
The above paper claims a factor of 4-5 at most.
derek
--
Derek M Jones tel: +44 (0) 1252
520 667
Knowledge Software Ltd mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Applications Standards Conformance Testing http://www.knosof.co.uk
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