Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Data Dependence In Programs Involving Indexed Variables, Borislav Nikolik

Dissertations and Theses

Symbolic execution is a powerful technique used to perform various activities such as program testing, formal verification of programs, etc. However, symbolic execution does not deal with indexed variables in an adequate manner. Integration of indexed variables such as arrays into symbolic execution would increase the generality of this technique. We present an original substitution technique that produces array-term-free constraints as a counterargument to the commonly accepted belief that symbolic execution cannot handle arrays. The substitution technique deals with constraints involving array terms with a single aggregate name, array terms with multiple aggregate names, and nested array terms. Our approach …

Evaluating The Effectiveness Of Certain Metrics In Measuring The Quality Of End User Documentation, Ronald Morrison

Dissertations and Theses

Traditional methods of evaluating quality in computer end user documentation have been subjective in nature, and have not been widely used in practice. Attempts to quantify quality and more narrowly define the essential features of quality have been limited -- leaving the issue of quality largely up to the writer of the user manual.

Quantifiable measures from the literature, especially Velotta (1992) and Brockman (1990), have been assembled into a set of uniformly weighted metrics for the measurement of document quality. This measure has been applied to the end user documentation of eighty-two personal computer packages. End user documentation is …

A Cognitively Motivated System For Software Component Reuse, Michael Joseph Mateas

Dissertations and Theses

Software reuse via component libraries suffers from the twin problems of code location and comprehension. The Intelligent Code Object Planner (ICOP) is a cognitively motivated system that facilitates code reuse by answering queries about how to produce an effect with the library. It can plan for effects which are not primitive with respect to the library by building a plan that incorporates multiple components. The primary subsystems of ICOP are a knowledge base which describes the ontology of the library, a natural language interface which translates user queries into a formal effect language (predicates), a planner which accepts the effect …

Difficulties Experienced Procedural Programmers Encounter When Transferring To An Object-Oriented Programming Paradigm, Scott Andrew Machaffie

Dissertations and Theses

Experienced procedural programmers seem to have difficulty when transferring from a procedural language to an object-oriented language. The problem is how to assist the experienced procedural programmers to make this shift. The long term goal of this research is to identify areas where programmers have problems and to develop an automated system to help them overcome these difficulties.

This study examines the class designs produced by procedural programmers and the effect of specifications and domain knowledge on class designs. Two types of specifications were used: those written from a procedural point of view which emphasized the functions and those written …

Comprehension Of Literate Programs By Novice And Intermediate Programmers, Christopher Forrest Bertholf

Dissertations and Theses

The studies reported herein compare comprehension of Lit style literate programs to that of traditional modular programs documented by embedded comments. Novice and intermediate programmers participated in three experiments designed to determine the comprehensibility of literate programs written using a language-independent system for abstraction-oriented literate programming compared with programs written using traditional modular programming techniques (traditional modular programs). Programs were written in either the C or FORTRAN programming language. Half of the subjects in each group received a literate program, while the other half received a traditional modular program with embedded documentation. Subjects received a problem specification, input and output …