In this article we quantitatively and qualitatively analyze a sample of novice programmer compilation log data, exploring whether (or how) low-achieving, average, and high-achieving students vary in their grasp of these introductory concepts. High-achieving students self-reported having the easiest time learning the introductory programming topics. In a quantitative analysis, though, high-achieving and average students were: 1) more effective at debugging (on average, as quantified by Jadud's Error Quotient (EQ)) than low-achieving students; and 2) were least confused, as quantified using Lee's confusion metric. However, the differences in EQ and confusion between groups were not statistically significant. This implied that all groups struggled with programming to similar extents.
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