An Empirical Study of Debugging Patterns Among Novices Programmers

Abstract

Students taking introductory computer science courses often have difficulty with the debugging process. This work investigates a number of different logical errors that novice programmers encounter and the associated debugging behaviors. Data is collected and analyzed data in two different experiments from 142 subjects. The results show some errors are more difficult than others. Different types of bugs and novices' debugging behaviors are identified. Years of experience showed a significant role in the process of debugging in terms of correctness level and time required for debugging