An empirical study on students’ ability to comprehend design patterns

Chatzigeorgiou, Alexander; Tsantalis, Nikolaos; Deligiannis, Ignatios

doi:10.1016/j.compedu.2007.10.003

Cited by 20 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…In other efforts there have been attempts to quantify differences between systems using design patterns and those without, focusing either on understandability [2], maintenance effort [17], or modularity [8].…”

Section: Measuring Differences In Maintainabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

A Case of Visitor versus Interpreter Pattern

Hills

Klint

Storm

et al. 2011

Objects, Models, Components, Patterns

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Abstract. We compare the Visitor pattern with the Interpreter pattern, investigating a single case in point for the Java language. We have produced and compared two versions of an interpreter for a programming language. The first version makes use of the Visitor pattern. The second version was obtained by using an automated refactoring to transform uses of the Visitor pattern to uses of the Interpreter pattern. We compare these two nearly equivalent versions on their maintenance characteristics and execution efficiency. Using a tailored experimental research method we can highlight differences and the causes thereof. The contributions of this paper are that it isolates the choice between Visitor and Interpreter in a realistic software project and makes the difference experimentally observable.

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Section: Measuring Differences In Maintainabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

A Case of Visitor versus Interpreter Pattern

Hills

Klint

Storm

et al. 2011

Objects, Models, Components, Patterns

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Others also recognized the role of cognition in program representation and comprehension [54,55], design strategies and patterns [56,57], and software design [58,59]. These studies show the evolution of design paradigm and development tools from taskcentered to human-centered.…”

Section: Human Factors In Software Developmentmentioning

confidence: 97%

It's the psychology stupid

Oliveira

Rosenthal

Morin

et al. 2014

Proceedings of the 30th Annual Computer Security Applications Conference

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Despite the security community's emphasis on the importance of building secure software, the number of new vulnerabilities found in our systems is increasing. In addition, vulnerabilities that have been studied for years are still commonly reported in vulnerability databases. This paper investigates a new hypothesis that software vulnerabilities are blind spots in developer's heuristic-based decision-making processes. Heuristics are simple computational models to solve problems without considering all the information available. They are an adaptive response to our short working memory because they require less cognitive effort. Our hypothesis is that as software vulnerabilities represent corner cases that exercise unusual information flows, they tend to be left out from the repertoire of heuristics used by developers during their programming tasks.To validate this hypothesis we conducted a study with 47 developers using psychological manipulation. In this study each developer worked for approximately one hour on six vulnerable programming scenarios. The sessions progressed from providing no information about the possibility of vulnerabilities, to priming developers about unexpected results, and explicitly mentioning the existence of vulnerabilities in the code. The results show that (i) security is not a priority in software development environments, (ii) security is not part of developer's mindset while coding, (iii) developers assume common cases for their code, (iv) security thinking requires cognitive effort, (v) security education helps, but developers can have difficulties correlating a particular learned vulnerability or security information with their current working task, and (vi) priming or explicitly cueing about vulnerabilities on-the-spot is a powerful mechanism to make developers aware about potential vulnerabilities.

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“…Here design patterns are used to brainstorm new learning designs within an enlarged community of practice (McAndrew & Goodyear 2007). A frequently used strategy for implementing design patterns is teaching novice designers how to use them in university courses (Chatzigeorgiou et al 2008;Kolfschoten et al 2008). The pattern's scope is finally tested in this stage.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A process model for developing learning design patterns with international scope

Lotz

Law

Nguyen-Ngoc³

2014

Education Tech Research Dev

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This paper investigates the process of identifying design patterns in international collaborative learning environments. In this context, design patterns are referred to as structured descriptions of best practice with pre-defined sections such as problem, solution and consequences. We pay special attention to how the scope of a design pattern is identified and articulated. Based on a review of the seminal design patterns literature and current practice in the area of learning design, the lack of a more specific process description for developing patterns with international scope is identified. The paper suggests a process model for developing patterns with international scope. This model is exemplified in a case study that links the analysis of observation in international learning environments to the articulation of design patterns by identifying culturally independent core values that constitute the foundations of a design pattern with international scope. These core values are linked to recurrent learning behaviors and specific artifacts that support learning in the articulation of a design pattern. The findings contribute to gaining a deeper understanding of the pattern scoping and abstraction process in international learning environments.

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An empirical study on students’ ability to comprehend design patterns

Cited by 20 publications

References 25 publications

A Case of Visitor versus Interpreter Pattern

A Case of Visitor versus Interpreter Pattern

It's the psychology stupid

A process model for developing learning design patterns with international scope

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