Mark Guzdial <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> said: > The question of what motivates people to learn to program is an open and > interesting research question-- [snip] > - At the low end: CMU's Software Engineering Institute estimates that > there are at least two and as many as ten times end-user programmers as > there are professional software developers today. What motivates > someone to pick up programming without any previous background (and > without, presumably, any desire to make it a profession)?
So this particular question *is* rather well researched, largely by members of the EUSES consortium (End-Users Shaping Effective Software), of which CMU is indeed a member. Consortium members are currently preparing a review publication which will deal with this question fairly thoroughly, but for an early answer based on previous research, my own 2002 paper has stood the test of time pretty well: Blackwell, A.F. (2002). First steps in programming: A rationale for Attention Investment models. In IEEE Symposia on Human-Centric Computing Languages and Environments, pp. 2-10. http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~afb21/publications/HCC02a.pdf For more information on the research of the EUSES consortium: http://eusesconsortium.org/ Alan -- Alan Blackwell Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/users/afb21/ Phone: +44 (0) 1223 334418 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- PPIG Discuss List (discuss@ppig.org) Discuss admin: http://limitlessmail.net/mailman/listinfo/discuss Announce admin: http://limitlessmail.net/mailman/listinfo/announce PPIG Discuss archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/discuss%40ppig.org/
