Syntax highlighting as an influencing factor when reading and comprehending source code

Syntax highlighting or syntax colouring, plays a vital role in programming development environments by colour-coding various code elements differently. The supposition is that this syntax highlighting assists programmers when reading and analysing code. However, academic text books are largely only available in black-and-white which could influence the comprehension of novice and beginner programmers. This study investigated whether student programmers experience more difficulty in reading and comprehending source code when it is presented without syntax highlighting. Number of fixations, fixation durations and regressions were all higher for black-and-white code than for colour code but not significantly so. Subjectively students indicated that the colour code snippets were easier to read and more aesthetically pleasing. Based on the analysis it could be concluded that students do not experience significantly more difficulty when reading code in black-and-white as printed in text books

Applying temporal chunk signals analysis to measure programming competence by the transcription of Java program code

This thesis investigates the basis for a novel method of quickly and efficiently assessing programming comprehension. It investigates the feasibility of assessing learners’ mental chunk structures, and their temporal chunk signals, as a way of measuring their competence. The focus is on the Java programming language. The thesis investigates the feasibility of chunk-based measures in two different simple transcription tasks: view display, where stimulus is visible at all times; and hide and show, where the stimulus is only made visible when a participant presses a special button. University computer science students and faculty are the target group. Chunking theory is utilised to define three chunking measures of competence and to anticipate how they would vary across participants with different degrees of Java competence. The measures are as follows: (1) the number of characters transcribed per view (or the number of views) of the Java program code; (2) the time spent writing between the views; and (3) the duration of pauses before writing each written character. Ninety-six participants participated in the three experiments, transcribing on graphics tablets in experimental settings, and evidence of chunking’s essential role in transcription tasks was revealed. Significant relationships were discovered between the chunking measures of competence and independent measures of Java competence (Java familiarity scores and students’ final test marks (for the third experiment)). The third experiment included a longitudinal post-test component spanning three months of learning, in which changes to the mean scores in characters per view, writing-times, and pauses reflected the students’ amount of learning