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Males’ and Females’ Script Debugging Strategies

  • Conference paper
End-User Development (IS-EUD 2009)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNPSE,volume 5435))

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Abstract

Little research has addressed IT professionals’ script debugging strategies, or considered whether there may be gender differences in these strategies. What strategies do male and female scripters use and what kinds of mechanisms do they employ to successfully fix bugs? Also, are scripters’ debugging strategies similar to or different from those of spreadsheet debuggers? Without the answers to these questions, tool designers do not have a target to aim at for supporting how male and female scripters want to go about debugging. We conducted a think-aloud study to bridge this gap. Our results include (1) a generalized understanding of debugging strategies used by spreadsheet users and scripters, (2) identification of the multiple mechanisms scripters employed to carry out the strategies, and (3) detailed examples of how these debugging strategies were employed by males and females to successfully fix bugs.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Oregon State University, Corvallis, Oregon, USA, 97331

    Valentina Grigoreanu & Margaret Burnett

  2. Microsoft, One Microsoft Way, Redmond, Washington, USA

    Valentina Grigoreanu, James Brundage, Eric Bahna, Paul ElRif & Jeffrey Snover

Authors
  1. Valentina Grigoreanu
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  2. James Brundage
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  3. Eric Bahna
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  4. Margaret Burnett
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  5. Paul ElRif
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  6. Jeffrey Snover
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Siegen, Hölderlinstr. 3, 57068, Siegen, Germany

    Volkmar Pipek

  2. College of Information Sciences and Technology, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802, USA

    Mary Beth Rosson

  3. Philips Research Europe, High Tech campus 34 - WB - 5.27, 5656 AE, Eindhoven, The Netherlands

    Boris de Ruyter

  4. Faculty of Information System and New Media, University of Siegen, Hölderlinstr. 3, 57068, Siegen, Germany

    Volker Wulf

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© 2009 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Grigoreanu, V., Brundage, J., Bahna, E., Burnett, M., ElRif, P., Snover, J. (2009). Males’ and Females’ Script Debugging Strategies. In: Pipek, V., Rosson, M.B., de Ruyter, B., Wulf, V. (eds) End-User Development. IS-EUD 2009. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 5435. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-00427-8_12

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-00427-8_12

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-00425-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-00427-8

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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