Abstract
The research on understanding how programmers read and comprehend error messages is still limited. Through an eye-tracking study, we hope to add to what is known about how student programmers read and act upon error messages. In this paper, we elaborate on the methodology that we plan to use in the hopes of eliciting feedback from the research community that can help us improve upon our research design. We propose the study to enable us to collect data about whether student programmers read error messages, how they parse the code to find the source of the error, and how students with different ability and confidence levels vary in the way they process the errors. We will be examining where the participants fixate and how they read through the code to find the error. We are also interested in comparing the scan patterns of students who are proficient versus less proficient as well as those with high and low self-efficacy. We hope that the findings will contribute to the discourse about how student programmers read and parse code for errors, as well as to the discourse about the design of better error messages.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Barik, T., et al.: Do developers read compiler error messages?. In: 2017 IEEE/ACM 39th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE), pp. 575–585. IEEE (2017)
Becker, B.A., et al.: Compiler error messages considered unhelpful: the landscape of text-based programming error message research. In: Proceedings of the Working Group Reports on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education, pp. 177–210 (2019)
Becker, B.A., Murray, C., Tao, T., Song, C., McCartney, R., Sanders, K.: Fix the first, ignore the rest: dealing with multiple compiler error messages. In: Proceedings of the 49th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education, pp. 634–639 (2018)
Brechmann, A., Sharif, B., Siegmund, J., Weimer, W., Endres, M.: Foundations for a New Perspective on Programming. Report from Dagstuhl Seminar 22402 (to appear)
Denny, P., Luxton-Reilly, A., Carpenter, D.: Enhancing syntax error messages appears ineffectual. In: Proceedings of the ITiCSE ‘14: Proceedings of the 2014 Conference on Innovation & Technology in Computer Science Education, pp. 273–278 (2014)
Dong, T., Khandwala, K.: The IMPACT of “Cosmetic” changes on the usability of error messages. In: Extended Abstracts of the 2019 Chi Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp. 1–6 (2019)
Du Boulay, B., Matthew, I.: Fatal error in pass zero: how not to confuse novices. Behav. Inf. Technol. 3(2), 109–118 (1984)
Dy, T., Rodrigo, M.M.: A detector for non-literal Java errors. In: Proceedings of the 10th Koli Calling International Conference on Computing Education Research, pp. 118–122 (2010)
Eraslan, S., Yesilada, Y., Harper, S.: Identifying patterns in eyetracking scanpaths in terms of visual elements of web pages. In: Casteleyn, S., Rossi, G., Winckler, M. (eds.) ICWE 2014. LNCS, vol. 8541, pp. 163–180. Springer, Cham (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-08245-5_10
Eraslan, S., Yesilada, Y., Harper, S.: Scanpath Trend Analysis on Web Pages: Clustering Eye Tracking Scanpaths. ACM Trans. Web 10(4), 35 (2016). Article 20. https://doi.org/10.1145/2970818
Eraslan, S., Yesilada, Y., Harper, S.: Engineering web- based interactive systems: trend analysis in eye tracking scanpaths with a tolerance. In: Proceedings of the ACM SIGCHI Symposium on Engineering Interactive Computing Systems, pp. 3–8 (2017)
Feitelson, D.G.: Considerations and pitfalls in controlled experiments on code comprehension. In: 2021 IEEE/ACM 29th International Conference on Program Comprehension (ICPC), pp. 106–117. IEEE (2021)
Goldberg, J.H., Helfman, J.I.: Scanpath clustering and aggregation. In: Proceedings of the 2010 Symposium on Eye Tracking Research and Applications, pp. 18–27 (2010)
Kohn, T.: The error behind the message: finding the cause of error messages in python. In: Proceedings of the 50th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education, pp. 524–530 (2019)
Marceau, G., Fisler, K., Krishnamurthi, S.: Measuring the effectiveness of error messages designed for novice programmers. In: Proceedings of the 42nd ACM Technical Symposium on Computer science Education, pp. 499–504 (2011)
Marceau, G., Fisler, K., Krishnamurthi, S.: Mind your language: on novices’ interactions with error messages. In: Proceedings of the 10th SIGPLAN Symposium on New Ideas, New Paradigms, and Reflections on Programming and Software, pp. 3–18 (2011)
Nienaltowski, M.H., Pedroni, M., Meyer, B.: Compiler error messages: what can help novices?. In: Proceedings of the 39th SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education, pp. 168–172 (2008)
Prather, J., et al.: On novices’ interaction with compiler error messages: a human factors approach. In: Proceedings of the 2017 ACM Conference on International Computing Education Research, pp. 74–82 (2017)
Sharafi, Z., Sharif, B., Guéhéneuc, Y.-G., Begel, A., Bednarik, R., Crosby, M.: A practical guide on conducting eye tracking studies in software engineering. Empir. Softw. Eng. 25(5), 3128–3174 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10664-020-09829-4
Sharif, B., Falcone, M., Maletic, J.I.: An eye-tracking study on the role of scan time in finding source code defects. In: Proceedings of the Symposium on Eye Tracking Research and Applications, pp. 381–384 (2012)
Tablatin, C.L.S., Rodrigo, M.M.T.: Identifying code reading strategies in debugging using STA with a tolerance algorithm. APSIPA Trans. Sig. Inf. Process. 11(1) (2022)
Tsai, M.-J., Wang, C.-Y., Hsu, P.-F.: Developing the computer programming self-efficacy scale for computer literacy education. J. Educ. Comput. Res. 56(8), 1345–1360 (2019)
Villamor, M.M., Rodrigo, M.M.T.: Predicting pair success in a pair programming eye tracking experiment using cross-recurrence quantification analysis. APSIPA Trans. Sig. Inf. Process. 11(1) (2022)
Wyrich, M., Bogner, J., Wagner, S.: 40 years of designing code comprehension experiments: a systematic mapping study. arXiv preprint arXiv:2206.11102 (2022)
Acknowledgment
The authors would like to acknowledge the following Dagstuhl Workshops:
• The Human Factors Impact of Programming Error Messages (22052)
• Foundations for a New Perspective of Understanding Programming (22402).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2023 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this paper
Cite this paper
Rodrigo, M.M.T., Tablatin, C.L.S. (2023). How Do Programming Students Read and Act upon Compiler Error Messages?. In: Schmorrow, D.D., Fidopiastis, C.M. (eds) Augmented Cognition. HCII 2023. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 14019. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-35017-7_11
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-35017-7_11
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-031-35016-0
Online ISBN: 978-3-031-35017-7
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)