Empirical Study on College Students´ Debugging Abilities in Computer Programming

College students´ debugging abilities plays a major role in their computer programming. Some researchers report that debugging work represents about 25-50% of the cost of a large software project, and an even greater proportion of an individual programmer´s task. This paper studied the college students´ debugging abilities in computer programming by designing an experiment, providing experimental materials, designing an experimental procedure, collecting experimental data, and analyzing these data. The aim of this study is mainly to make clear college students´ debugging knowledge, debugging progress, debugging skills, and debugging strategies by analyzing their debugging protocol data and therefore offer instructors some insights into instructing college students in their debugging programs.