For instance, do programmers recognize Java programs as consisting of packages, which are composed of classes, which, in turn, consist of method and field declarations? If so, what are the natural "atomic units" of such a hierarchization? Clearly, programmers do no go as far as viewing program tokens as consisting of individual characters, though I am sure there are situations in which humans perceive individual words as constructed from smaller units. (Note that I am interested in the *perceived* structure, as opposed to the structure defined by a formal programming language grammar.)
While there may be little (none?) prior work in this domain pertaining to programmers, I have a feeling that there should be some existing psychology research that can be applied in this context. Perhaps there's even a formalizm for describing hierarchival composition of categories? (Something akin to formal grammars?)
Understanding programmer's perception of program structure is central to my Ph.D. research and unless I can find existing studies, I will run user experiments to fill in this gap. However, at the very least, I am hoping to find a starting point for devising such a study.
Naturally, I tried looking on various search engines, but I am affrain I do not know appropriate terminology. So even pointers in that direction will be greately appreciated.
Thank you!
Marat Boshernitsan.
Ph.D. Candidate
Computer Science Division, EECS
University of California at Berkeley
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