Novice comprehension of small programs written in the procedural and object-oriented styles

This research studied the comprehension of small procedural and object-oriented programs by novice programmers. The objective was to find out what kinds of information novice programmers extract from small programs and to infer from this the mental representation formed during program comprehension. In particular, the question was whether novicesʹ mental representations focus more on domain-level or program-level knowledge and whether the mental representation of object-oriented program differ from procedural programs. The experiment indicated that novices tend to develop a mental representation of small object-oriented programs strong in function-related knowledge, but weaker in data flow and program-related knowledge. By contrast, novicesʹ mental representations of small procedural programs were stronger in program-related knowledge. The results are discussed in terms of theories of program comprehension and programming pedagogy. C 1999 Academic Press