37 Million Compilations: Investigating Novice Programming Mistakes in Large-Scale Student DataAmjad AltadmriNeil C.C. Brown
Amjad Altadmri
Neil C.C. Brown
2015
Proceedings of the 46th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education
Previous investigations of student errors have typically focused on samples of hundreds of students at individual institutions. This work uses a year's worth of compilation events from over 250,000 students all over the world, taken from the large Blackbox data set. We analyze the frequency, time-to-fix, and spread of errors among users, showing how these factors inter-relate, in addition to their development over the course of the year. These results can inform the design of courses, textbooks and also tools to target the most frequent (or hardest to fix) errors.
Study InformationManually extracted from the paper by the Progmiscon.org team
Programming Languages
Java
Method
Repository mining study (BlueJ Blackbox)
Subjects
250000+ students across the world
Artifact
https://bluej.org/blackbox/Related Study ResultsPhenomena studied in this paper that map to Progmiscon.org misconceptions
The following list summarizes those phenomena reported in this study that provide evidence for misconceptions documented on Progmiscon.org. (The paper may provide evidence for other misconceptions as well. This list focuses exclusively on misconceptions documented on Progmiscon.org.)
MistakesMisunderstandings, type errors, other semantic errors
A
Confusing the assignment operator with the comparison operator
Users making mistake
This provides evidence potentially relevant for the following Progmiscon.org misconceptions:
D
Confusing "short-circuit" evaluators with conventional logical operators
Users making mistake
This provides evidence potentially relevant for the following Progmiscon.org misconceptions:
H
Using keywords as method or variable names
Users making mistake
This provides evidence potentially relevant for the following Progmiscon.org misconceptions:
J
Forgetting parentheses after a method call
Users making mistake
This provides evidence potentially relevant for the following Progmiscon.org misconceptions: