Blogs (19) >>
Fri 17 Mar 2023 13:45 - 14:10 at 715 - Code Style and Quality Chair(s): Alark Joshi

Low code quality incurs a significant cost upon the software industry. Despite this, little serious effort has been devoted to the topic at the most basic levels of computing science education. Where studies have been conducted, the results are disappointing. In this work, a medium to large CS1/2 course (n=200 students) over four years was analyzed through the lens of code violations to better understand (1) what code violations occur most frequently, (2) how does their occurrence vary throughout the course, and (3) to what extent do teaching assistants have an effect upon code quality. Results showed a statistically significant improvement in code quality over 19 assignments in all four course iterations. In particular, when a single violation was the focus of a learning outcome, the effects were both a dramatic fall and sustained low occurrence. However, this improvement was mostly focused on the three most frequently occurring violations (>70%), which masked an increase in lesser occurring violations throughout the course. Finally, the effects from different teaching assistants were found to be random at best, contradicting expectations that their influence would be easily detected. Given that explicit learning outcomes targeted at code quality had an effect and teaching assistant influence had no effect, a path forward to improving code quality might combine these forces without creating too many additional demands upon the already stretched teaching resources with CS1/2 courses.

Fri 17 Mar

Displayed time zone: Eastern Time (US & Canada) change

13:45 - 15:00
Code Style and QualityPapers at 715
Chair(s): Alark Joshi University of San Francisco
13:45
25m
Paper
It's Never too Early to Learn About Code Quality: A Longitudinal Study of Code Quality in First-year Computer Science StudentsIn-PersonGlobal
Papers
Linus Östlund KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Niklas Wicklund KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Richard Glassey KTH Royal Institute of Technology
DOI
14:10
25m
Paper
Eastwood-Tidy: C Linting for Automated Code Style Assessment in Programming CoursesIn-Person
Papers
Rowan Hart Purdue University, Brian Hays Purdue University, Connor McMillin Purdue University, El Kindi Rezig Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Gustavo Rodriguez-Rivera Purdue University, Jeffrey Turkstra Purdue University
DOI
14:35
25m
Paper
Time-constrained Code Recall Tasks for Monitoring the Development of Programming PlansIn-PersonGlobal
Papers
Ava Heinonen Aalto University, Arto Hellas Aalto University
DOI