J. C. Spohrer
ABSTRACT
In this paper, we investigate whether or not most novice programming bugs arise because students have misconceptions about the semantics of particular language constructs. Three high frequency bugs are examined in detail — one that clearly arises from a construct-based misconception, one that does not, and one that is less cut and dry. Based on our empirical study of 101 bug types from three programming problems, we will argue that most bugs are not due to misconceptions about the semantics of language constructs.
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Index Terms
- Alternatives to construct-based programming misconceptions
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