An exploration of novice programming errors in an object-oriented environment

Authors:
Matthew Barr;Sam Holden;Dave Phillips;Tony Greening
Affiliations:
Basser Department of Computer Science, University of Sydney, NSW, 2006, Australia;Basser Department of Computer Science, University of Sydney, NSW, 2006, Australia;Basser Department of Computer Science, University of Sydney, NSW, 2006, Australia;SITMS, University of Ballarat, Victoria, 3353, Australia
Venue:
ITiCSE-WGR '99 Working group reports from ITiCSE on Innovation and technology in computer science education
Year:
1999

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Abstract

When studying a programming language for the first time, the majority of student errors fall into broad (and well-documented) categories [3]. This paper aims to investigate errors made by first year students in Blue: A new, object-oriented language specifically designed at the University of Sydney for teaching novice students [2].These errors were investigated by a survey delivered over the World-Wide Web and consisting of multiple choice and free-form short-answer questions. The results of the survey suggest that a student who learns with Blue is no more likely to make errors that are commonly made by novice programmers, although is not necessarily better equipped to design and write code in an object-oriented paradigm. More research is indicated to make statements about the latter.