Visual Depiction of Decision Statements: What is Best for Programmers and Non-Programmers?

Empirical Software Engineering

Volumn 2, Issue 4, 1997, Pages 361-379

  Kiper, James D ^a,d   Auernheimer, Brent ^b,c,e   Ames, Charles K ^a,c  

^a MIAMI UNIVERSITY   (United States)

^b CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

^c CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY   (United States)

^d OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

^e UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA   (United States)

Author keywords

Decision structures; Expert novice differences; Program comprehension; Visual programming

Indexed keywords

COMPUTER GRAPHICS; COMPUTER PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES; DATABASE SYSTEMS; DECISION SUPPORT SYSTEMS; GRAPHICAL USER INTERFACES; IMAGE PROCESSING;

PROGRAM COMPREHENSION; TEXTUAL NOTATION; VISUAL PROGRAMMING;

SOFTWARE ENGINEERING;

EID: 0031334922     PISSN: 13823256     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1023/A:1009797801907     Document Type: Article

References (23)

1. Basili, V. R. A., Selby, R. W., and Hutchens, D. H. 1986. Experimentation in software engineering. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering 12(6): 758-773.
2. Burnett, M. M., and Baker, M. J. 1993. A classification system for visual programming languages. Technical report 93-60-14. Oregon State University, June 1993.
3. Chang, S., ed. 1990. Visual Languages and Visual Programming. New York: Plenum Press.
4. Cox, P. T., and Pietrzykowski. 1988. Using a pictorial representation to combine dataflow and object-orientation in a language independent programming mechanism. Proceedings International Computer Science Conference, 695-704.
5. Curtis, B., Sheppard, S., Kruesi-Bailey, J., and Boehm-Davis, D. 1989. Experimental evaluation of software documentation formats. Journal of Systems and Software 9(2): 167-207.
6. Davies, S. P. 1989. Skill levels and strategic differences in plan comprehension and implementation in programming. In A. Sutcliffe and L. Macaulay (eds.), People and Computers V. Cambridge University Press.
7. Fenton, N., Pfleeger, S. L., and Glass, R. L. 1994. Science and substance: a challenge to software engineers. IEEE Software 11(4): 86-95.
8. Glinert, E. P., ed. Visual Programming Environments: Applications and Issues. Los Alamitos, CA: IEEE Computer Society Press.
9. Green, T. R. G. 1977. Conditional program statements and their comprehensibility to professional programmers. Journal of Occupational Psychology 59: 93-109.
10. Green, T. R. G., Petre, M., and Bellamy, R. K. E. 1991. Comprehensibility of visual and textual programs: a test of superlativism against the 'match-mismatch' conjecture. Empirical studies of programmers: fourth workshop, Jürgen Koenemann-Belliveau, Thomas G. Moher, Scott P. Robertson (eds.). Norwood, N.J.: Ablex Pub. Corp.
11. Green, T. R. G., and Petre, M. 1992. When visual programs are harder to read than textual programs. ECCE-6: Proceedings of the Sixth European Conference on Cognitive Ergonomics, September 1992.
12. Ichikawa, T., and Hirakawa, M. 1990. Iconic programming: where to go? IEEE Software 7(7): 63-68.
13. Kiper, J. D., Howard, E., and Ames, C. 1996. Criteria for evaluation of visual programming languages. Journal of Visual Languages and Computing 8(2) 175-192.
14. Moher, T., Mak, D. C., Blumenthal, B., and Leventhal, L. M. 1993. Comparing the comprehensibility of textual and graphical programs: the case of Petri nets. Empirical Studies of Programmers: Fifth Workshop, C. R. Cook, J. C. Schotz, and J. C. Spohner (eds.), 137-161.
15. Myers, B. A. 1990. Taxonomies of visual programming and program visualization. Journal of Visual Languages and Computing 1(1): 97-123.
16. Pandey, R., and Burnett, M. 1993. Is it easier to write matrix multiplication visually or textually? An empirical study. Proceeding of 1993 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages, 344-351.
17. Petre, M., and Green, T. R. G. 1993. Learning to read graphics: some evidence that 'seeing' an information display is an acquired skill. Journal of Visual Languages and Computing 4: 55-70.
18. Petre, M. 1995. Why looking isn't always seeing: readership skills and graphical programming. Communications of the ACM 38(6): 45-56.
19. Price, B. A., Baecker, R. M., and Small, I. S. 1993. A principled taxonomy of software visualization. Journal of Visual Languages 4(3): 211-266.
20. Scanlan, D. A. 1989. Structured flowcharts outperform pseudocode: an experimental comparison. IEEE Software 6(5): 28-36.
21. Shneiderman, B., Mayer, R., McKay, D., and Heller, P. 1977. Experimental investigations of the utility of detailed flowcharts in programming. Communications of the ACM 20(6): 373-381.
22. Von Mayrhauser, A., and Vans, A. M. 1995. Program understanding: models and experiments. Advances in Computers Vol. 40. M. C. Yovits and M. V. Zelkowitz (eds.). San Diego: Academic Press, 1-38.
23. Vose, G. M., and Williams, G. 1986. LabVIEW: Laboratory Virtual Instrument Engineering Workbench. Byte September: 84-92.