Course pages 2013–14

Usability of Programming Languages

Lecture notes

Lecture notes text

Current research resources

See the online proceedings of workshops of the Psychology of Programming Interest Group, and local copy of the proceedings of PPIG 2012 conference (8 MB file), since the archive copy doesn't have a table of contents.

Review by Ko et al (2011) on the state of the art in end-user software engineering.

Call for papers for PPIG 2014.

Research with human participants

See Cambridge online guidance related to human participants in technology research.

Candidate systems for experiments

Larch

Course text

J.-M. Hoc, T.R.G. Green, R. Samurçay and D.J. Gilmore (Eds) (1990).
Psychology of Programming.
Published by the European Association of Cognitive Ergonomics and Academic Press.

Part 1 - Theoretical and Methodological Issues (introduction)

• 1.1 Programming, Programming Languages and Programming Methods - C. Pair (pp. 9-19)
• 1.2 The Nature of Programming - T.R.G. Green (pp. 23-44)
• 1.3 The Tasks of Programming - N. Pennington and B. Grabowski (pp. 45-62)
• 1.4 Human Cognition and Programming - T. Ormerod (pp. 63-82)
• 1.5 Methodological Issues in the Study of Programming - D.J. Gilmore (pp. 83-98)

Part 2 Language Design and Acquisition of Programming (introduction)

• 2.1 Expert Programmers and Programming Languages - M. Petre (pp. 103-115)
• 2.2 Programming Languages as Information Structures - T.R.G. Green (pp. 118-137)
• 2.3 Language Semantics, Mental Models and Analogy - J.-M. Hoc and A. Nguyen-Xuan (pp. 139-156)
• 2.4 Acquisition of Programming Knowledge and Skills - J. Rogalski and R. Samurçay (pp. 157-174)
• 2.5 Programming Languages in Education: The Search for an Easy Start - P. Mendelsohn, T.R.G. Green and P. Brna (pp. 175-200)

Part 3 Expert Programming Skills and Job Aids (introduction)

• 3.1 Expert Programming Knowledge: A Schema-based Approach - F. Détienne (pp. 205-222)
• 3.2 Expert Programming Knowledge: A Strategic Approach - D.J. Gilmore (pp. 223-234)
• 3.3 Expert Software Design Strategies - W. Visser and J.-M. Hoc (pp. 235-249)

Part 4 Broader Issues

• 4.1 The Psychology of Programming in the Large: Team and Organizational Behaviour - B. Curtis and D. Walz (pp. 253-270)
• 4.2 Research and Practice: Software Design Methods and Tools - B. Kitchenham and R. Carn. (pp 271-284)

Note on copyright: This book is currently not available in print. A selection of chapters has been provided, with the permission of the editors, for non-commercial educational and research use only. Members of the Psychology of Programming Interest Group (PPIG) continue to conduct research as outlined here, and it is intended that specific chapters will be replaced with updated versions when individual authors are able to provide them. Volunteer assistance with OCR of these chapters, to assist those authors who no longer have their original manuscripts, would be appreciated.