Comparison of the effects of professional and pedagogical program development environments on novice programmers

  • Authors:

  • Dieter Vogts;André Calitz;Jean Greyling

  • Affiliations:

  • Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, Port Elizabeth, South Africa;Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, Port Elizabeth, South Africa;Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, Port Elizabeth, South Africa

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the 2008 annual research conference of the South African Institute of Computer Scientists and Information Technologists on IT research in developing countries: riding the wave of technology
  • Year:
  • 2008

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Abstract

The program development environment a novice programmer uses has been identified as having a significant impact on the outcome of the process of learning to program. Professional program development environments are developed specifically for professional programmers and are often utilised by educational institutions to teach novice programmers. Pedagogical program development environments have been created to assist novice programmers in the process of learning to program. An empirical experiment was conducted to compare a representative professional program development environment with a representative pedagogical program development environment to determine how novice programmers are affected by the program development environment utilised. It was found that low risk novice programmers benefited significantly in terms of academic performance, while high risk novice programmers benefited significantly in terms of programming behaviour by using a pedagogical program development environment. The results indicate that a significant improvement in programming behaviour does not imply a significant increase in academic performance as well.