The Hidden Program State Hurts Everyone
Pages 266 - 274
Abstract
While visual scaffolding, live programming, and direct manipulation of the program state are considered useful programming paradigms for novices, they might not always offer the same benefits to experienced software developers. In this essay, we will use chess as a proxy for exploring how these paradigms can also support those who have an intuitive understanding of the program state and its connection with textual code. We will consider the visual programming language Algot and recent user studies conducted on the language to uncover insights into how direct manipulation and programming by demonstration can benefit everyone.
References
[1]
Michel Adam, Moncef Daoud, and Patrice Frison. 2019. Direct manipulation versus text-based programming: An experiment report. In Proceedings of the 2019 ACM Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education. 353–359. https://doi.org/10.1145/3304221.3319738
[2]
David M Frohlich. 1993. The history and future of direct manipulation. Behaviour & Information Technology, 12, 6 (1993), 315–329. https://doi.org/10.1080/01449299308924396
[3]
Carlisle Eldwidge George. 1996. Investigating the effectiveness of a software-reinforced approach to understanding recursion. Ph. D. Dissertation. Goldsmiths College (University of London).
[4]
Carlisle E George. 2000. EROSI—visualising recursion and discovering new errors. ACM SIGCSE Bulletin, 32, 1 (2000), 305–309. https://doi.org/10.1145/331795.331875
[5]
Oliver Graf, Sverrir Thorgeirsson, and Zhendong Su. 2024. Assessing Live Programming for Program Comprehension. In Proceedings of the 29th Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education Conference (ITiCSE 2024). ACM, Milan, Italy. https://doi.org/10.1145/3649217.3653547
[6]
Paul Graham. 2005. Beating the Averages. https://paulgraham.com/avg.html Accessed: 2024-04-15
[7]
Philip J. Guo. 2013. Online Python tutor: embeddable web-based program visualization for CS education. In Proceeding of the 44th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE ’13). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA. 579–584. isbn:9781450318686 https://doi.org/10.1145/2445196.2445368
[8]
John Hartmann. 2008. Garry Kasparov Is a cyborg, or What ChessBase Teaches Us about Technology.
[9]
Martin Hirzel. 2023. Low-Code Programming Models. Commun. ACM, 66, 10 (2023), sep, 76–85. https://doi.org/10.1145/3587691
[10]
Edwin L Hutchins, James D Hollan, and Donald A Norman. 1985. Direct manipulation interfaces. Human–computer interaction, 1, 4 (1985), 311–338.
[11]
Jules Jacobs. 2012. Comment on Bret Victor: Learnable Programming. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4578339 Accessed: 2024-04-16
[12]
Oscar Karnalim and Mewati Ayub. 2017. The effectiveness of a program visualization tool on introductory programming: A case study with PythonTutor. CommIT (Communication and Information Technology) Journal, 11, 2 (2017), 67–76. https://doi.org/10.21512/commit.v11i2.3704
[13]
Tom Lieber, Joel R Brandt, and Rob C Miller. 2014. Addressing misconceptions about code with always-on programming visualizations. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. 2481–2490. https://doi.org/10.1145/2556288.2557409
[14]
Don Norman. 2013. The design of everyday things: Revised and expanded edition. Basic books.
[15]
Alexander Repenning. 2017. Moving Beyond Syntax: Lessons from 20 Years of Blocks Programing in AgentSheets. J. Vis. Lang. Sentient Syst., 3, 1 (2017), 68–91. https://doi.org/10.18293/VLSS2017-010
[16]
Mitchel Resnick, John Maloney, Andrés Monroy-Hernández, Natalie Rusk, Evelyn Eastmond, Karen Brennan, Amon Millner, Eric Rosenbaum, Jay Silver, and Brian Silverman. 2009. Scratch: programming for all. Commun. ACM, 52, 11 (2009), 60–67. https://doi.org/10.1145/1592761.1592779
[17]
Charles Roberts, Matthew Wright, and JoAnn Kuchera-Morin. 2015. Beyond editing: extended interaction with textual code fragments. In NIME. 126–131. https://doi.org/10.5555/2993778.2993812
[18]
Scott Schneider. 2012. Comment on Bret Victor: Learnable Programming. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4577609 Accessed: 2023-04-16
[19]
Ben Shneiderman. 1982. The future of interactive systems and the emergence of direct manipulation. Behaviour & Information Technology, 1, 3 (1982), 237–256.
[20]
Sverrir Thorgeirsson, Lennart Lais, Theo Weidmann, and Zhendong Su. 2024. Recursion in Secondary Computer Science Education: A Comparative Study of Visual Programming Approaches. In Proceedings of the 55th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE 2024). Portland, Oregon. https://doi.org/10.1145/3626252.3630916
[21]
Sverrir Thorgeirsson and Zhendong Su. 2021. Algot: An Educational Programming Language with Human-Intuitive Visual Syntax. In 2021 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing (VL/HCC). 1–5. https://doi.org/10.1109/VL/HCC51201.2021.9576166
[22]
Sverrir Thorgeirsson, Theo Weidmann, Karl-Heinz Weidmann, and Zhendong Su. 2024. Comparing Cognitive Load Among Undergraduate Students Programming in Python and the Visual Language Algot. In Proceedings of the 55th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE 2024). Portland, Oregon. https://doi.org/10.1145/3626252.3630808
[23]
Sverrir Thorgeirsson, Chengyu Zhang, Theo B. Weidmann, Karl-Heinz Weidmann, and Zhendong Su. 2024. An Electroencephalography Study on Cognitive Load in Visual and Textual Programming. In Proceedings of the 2024 ACM Conference on International Computing Education Research. In press. (ICER ’24). Melbourne, VIC, Australia. https://doi.org/10.1145/3632620.3671124
[24]
Jasper Tran O’Leary, Gabrielle Benabdallah, and Nadya Peek. 2023. Imprimer: Computational Notebooks for CNC Milling. In Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. 1–15. https://doi.org/doi.org/10.1145/3544548.3581334
[25]
Bret Victor. 2012. Learnable programming: Designing a programming system for understanding programs. URL: http://worrydream. com/LearnableProgramming.
[26]
John J Watkins. 2004. Across the board: the mathematics of chessboard problems. Princeton University Press.
[27]
Theo B Weidmann, Sverrir Thorgeirsson, and Zhendong Su. 2022. Bridging the Syntax-Semantics Gap of Programming. In Proceedings of the 2022 ACM SIGPLAN International Symposium on New Ideas, New Paradigms, and Reflections on Programming and Software. 80–94. https://doi.org/10.1145/3563835.3567668
Index Terms
- The Hidden Program State Hurts Everyone
Recommendations
An Electroencephalography Study on Cognitive Load in Visual and Textual Programming
ICER '24: Proceedings of the 2024 ACM Conference on International Computing Education Research - Volume 1This paper presents a comparative study of Algot, a visual programming language designed to bridge the syntax-semantics gap via liveness and programming by demonstration, and the textual programming language Python. We conducted an experimental, within-...
Assessing Live Programming for Program Comprehension
ITiCSE 2024: Proceedings of the 2024 on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education V. 1Previous research on the effects of live program composition in computer science education has shown mixed results; while live programming is well-received by students and can improve the program composition process in some contexts, the resulting ...
Explaining Algorithms with the Visual Programming Language Algot
ITiCSE 2024: Proceedings of the 2024 on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education V. 2Algot is a visual, live programming language for computer science education that uses a novel implementation of programming by demonstration. Recent experimental studies indicate that Algot is effective for teaching foundational computer science concepts ...
Comments
Please enable JavaScript to view thecomments powered by Disqus.Information & Contributors
Information
Published In
October 2024
315 pages
Copyright © 2024 Copyright is held by the owner/author(s). Publication rights licensed to ACM.
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].
Sponsors
In-Cooperation
- SIGAda: SIGAda
Publisher
Association for Computing Machinery
New York, NY, United States
Publication History
Published: 17 October 2024
Check for updates
Author Tags
Qualifiers
- Research-article
Conference
Onward! '24
Sponsor:
Onward! '24: 2024 ACM SIGPLAN International Symposium on New Ideas, New Paradigms, and Reflections on Programming and Software
October 23 - 25, 2024
CA, Pasadena, USA
Acceptance Rates
Overall Acceptance Rate 40 of 105 submissions, 38%
Upcoming Conference
Contributors
Other Metrics
Bibliometrics & Citations
Bibliometrics
Article Metrics
- 0Total Citations
- 86Total Downloads
- Downloads (Last 12 months)86
- Downloads (Last 6 weeks)26
Reflects downloads up to 16 Dec 2024
Other Metrics
Citations
View Options
Login options
Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.
Sign in