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Sajaniemi J. (2002)

An Empirical Analysis of Roles of Variables in Novice-Level Procedural Programs

Proceedings of IEEE 2002 Symposia on Human Centric Computing Languages and Environments (HCC'02), Arlington, VA, September 2002. IEEE Computer Society, 37-39.

Abstract: The use of all variables in 109 novice-level, but expert-written, procedural programs were analyzed in order to find a small but still comprehensive set of generic roles that describe the nature of the successive values a variable obtains. This paper gives the results of the analysis: a list of only nine roles that cover 99 % of variables, frequencies of the roles, and discovered role changes.

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