Analyzing syntax error patterns among novice programmers

Abstract

This paper reports on work to establish the relationship between various patterns of syntax errors and both the programming process and the ultimate degree of success. Students in introductory and intermediate programming courses tend to have a large number of syntax errors; some of these errors are simply typos, while others are the result of some type of misunderstanding about the fundamentals of programming or of the programming language. In this work, which is currently in progress, we have accumulated student compilation data from an intermediate programming-intensive course at The University of Alabama. We are in the process of correlating these data with both the (a) overall project grade and (b) whether or not the students followed an iterative enhancement paradigm in completing the assignment. The idea is to determine whether different patterns of errors led to a difference in overall performance, as well as whether different development paradigms led to different patterns of errors.