From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] on behalf of Marat Boshernisan
Sent: Fri 2/13/2004 1:37 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: PPIG discuss: programmer's view of program structure?
I am looking for insight on how programmers perceive
organizational
structure of computer programs.
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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