Teaching Students To Use Programming Error Messages
Authors: 
Dennis J. Bouvier, Ellie Lovellette, 
Eddie Antonio Santos, 
Brett A. Becker, 
Tom Crick, 
Venu G. Dasigi, Jack Forden, 
Olga Glebova, 
Swaroop Joshi, Stan Kurkovsky, Seán RussellAuthors Info & Claims
Pages 207 - 208
Abstract
Research shows many students struggle to use programming error and warning messages effectively. Instead of using these messages as aids to debug and fix their code, some students have negative emotional reactions to seeing 'angry red text'. Not utilizing programming error and warning messages effectively, or at all, increases the difficulty of learning to program.
As compiler messages can vary by programming language and/or development environment, lessons on reading them are not typically included in mainstream educational materials. We believe this gap can be filled and that students can learn to use error messages to their advantage. Further, we believe that teaching students how to read and use error messages can have a significant impact on the learning experience for novice programmers.
The goal of this working group is to develop educational materials to teach students to use programming error messages, and evaluate the use of these materials. An additional goal is to investigate the role that large language models may play in the interpretation of error messages in the educational environment. We will produce guidelines for developing educational materials and strategies informed by feedback obtained from the community and our experimentation.
References
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Brett A. Becker, Paul Denny, Raymond Pettit, Durell Bouchard, Dennis J. Bouvier, Brian Harrington, Amir Kamil, Amey Karkare, Chris McDonald, Peter-Michael Osera, Janice L. Pearce, and James Prather. 2019. 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 (Aberdeen, Scotland UK) (ITiCSE-WGR '19). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 177--210. https://doi.org/10.1145/3344429.3372508
[2]
Brett A. Becker, Paul Denny, Janet Siegmund, Andreas Stefik, and Eddie Antonio Santos. 2022. The Human Factors Impact of Programming Error Messages (Dagstuhl Seminar 22052). Dagstuhl Reports 12, 1 (2022), 119--130. https://doi.org/10.4230/DagRep.12.1.119
[3]
Brett A Becker, Cormac Murray, Tianyi Tao, Changheng Song, Robert McCartney, and Kate Sanders. 2018. Fix the first, ignore the rest: Dealing with multiple compiler error messages. In Proceedings of the 49th ACM technical symposium on computer science education. 634--639. https://doi.org//10.1145/3159450.3159453
[4]
Paul Denny, James Prather, and Brett A. Becker. 2020. Error Message Readability and Novice Debugging Performance. In Proceedings of the 2020 ACM Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education (Trondheim, Norway) (ITiCSE '20). International Foundation for Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems, Richland, SC, 480--486. https://doi.org/10.1145/3341525.3387384
[5]
Paul Denny, James Prather, Brett A. Becker, Catherine Mooney, John Homer, Zachary C Albrecht, and Garrett B. Powell. 2021. On Designing Programming Error Messages for Novices: Readability and Its Constituent Factors. In Proceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Yokohama, Japan) (CHI '21). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 55, 15 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3411764.3445696
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Ioannis Karvelas, Joe Dillane, and Brett A. Becker. 2020. Compiler Error Messages: Their Content and Accessibility in Novice Programming Environments. In Proceedings of the 51st ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (Portland, OR, USA) (SIGCSE '20). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1310. https://doi.org/10.1145/3328778.3372617
[7]
Juho Leinonen, Arto Hellas, Sami Sarsa, Brent Reeves, Paul Denny, James Prather, and Brett A. Becker. 2023. Using Large Language Models to Enhance Programming Error Messages. In Proceedings of the 54th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education V. 1 (Toronto ON, Canada) (SIGCSE 2023). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 563--569. https://doi.org/10.1145/3545945.3569770
[8]
James Prather, Paul Denny, Brett A. Becker, Robert Nix, Brent N. Reeves, Arisoa S. Randrianasolo, and Garrett Powell. 2023. First Steps Towards Predicting the Readability of Programming Error Messages. In Proceedings of the 54th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education V. 1 (Toronto ON, Canada) (SIGCSE 2023). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 549--555. https://doi.org/10.1145/3545945.3569791
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Eddie Antonio Santos. 2022. What Makes a Programming Error Message Good?. In The United Kingdom and Ireland Computing Education Research (UKICER) Conference (UKICER2022). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1. https://doi.org/10.1145/3555009.3555032
[10]
Eddie Antonio Santos, Ioannis Karvelas, and Brett A. Becker. 2023. Applying Software Engineering Anti-Patterns to Programming Error Messages. In Proceedings of the 54th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education V. 2 (Toronto ON, Canada) (SIGCSE 2023). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1297. https://doi.org/10.1145/3545947.3576243
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Andrew Taylor, Alexandra Vassar, Jake Renzella, and Hammond Pearce. 2023. Integrating Large Language Models into the Debugging C Compiler for generating contextual error explanations. arxiv:2308.11873 [cs.SE]
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- Teaching Students To Use Programming Error Messages
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Published In
December 2023
50 pages
ISBN:9798400703744
DOI:10.1145/3617650
- General Chairs:
- Venkatesh Choppella,
- Deepak B. Phatak,
- Program Chairs:
- Andrew Luxton-Reilly,
- Michelle Craig
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Published: 05 December 2023
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