Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 1 of 1
Full-Text Articles in Engineering
Debugging: The Key To Unlocking The Mind Of A Novice Programmer?, Anthony A. Lowe
Debugging: The Key To Unlocking The Mind Of A Novice Programmer?, Anthony A. Lowe
School of Engineering Education Graduate Student Series
Novice programmers must master two skills to show lasting success: writing code and, when that fails, the ability to debug it. Instructors spend much time teaching the details of writing code but debugging gets significantly less attention. But what if teaching debugging could implicitly teach other aspects of coding better than teaching a language teaching debugging? This paper explores a new theoretical framework, the Theory of Applied Mind for Programming (TAMP), which merges dual process theory with Jerome Bruner’s theory of representations to model the mind of a programmer. TAMP looks to provide greater explanatory power in why novices struggle …