A study of the difficulties of novice programmers

  • Authors:

  • Essi Lahtinen;Kirsti Ala-Mutka;Hannu-Matti Järvinen

  • Affiliations:

  • Tampere University of Technology, Tampere, Finland;Tampere University of Technology, Tampere, Finland;Tampere University of Technology, Tampere, Finland

  • Venue:
  • ITiCSE '05 Proceedings of the 10th annual SIGCSE conference on Innovation and technology in computer science education
  • Year:
  • 2005

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Abstract

Programming is related to several fields of technology, and many university students are studying the basics of it. Unfortunately, they often face difficulties already on the basic courses. This work studies the difficulties in learning programming in order to support developing learning materials for basic programming courses. The difficulties have to be recognized to be able to aid learning and teaching in an effective way.An international survey of opinions was organized for more than 500 students and teachers. This paper analyses the results of the survey. The survey provides information of the difficulties experienced and perceived when learning and teaching programming. The survey results also provide basis for recommendations for developing learning materials and approaches.