Replicating novices' struggles with coding style.

Eliane Stampfer Wiese, Anna N. Rafferty, Daniel M. Kopta, Jacqulyn M. Anderson

Abstract: Good style makes code easier for others to read and modify. Control flow is one element of style where experts expect particular structure, such as conjoining conditions rather than nesting if statements. Empirical work is necessary to understand why novices use poor style, so they can be taught to use good style. Previous work shows that many students know what control flows experts prefer, but may say that novice-styled code is more readable. Yet, these same students showed similarly high comprehension across both expert-and novice-styled code. We propose a replication of that work that more fully assesses students' code comprehension and code writing. Our replication focuses on students who are earlier in their computer science courses and are less likely to be majors, to determine whether the pattern of results is particular to students who are relatively attuned to style concerns. Our pilot of the proposed replication finds that: students in this new population are less able to identify expert code; expert style may reduce comprehension for some control flows; and writing with good style does not always predict a preference for reading code with good style.