Analyzing the Effects of Error Messages Presentation on Debugging and Programming

Abstract

Programming is a fundamental skill of computer science students. However, it can be troublesome to learn. It is notable that a programming error messages can be hard for beginners to comprehend, hampering progress and prompting disappointment. Effectively, translating compiler error messages is significant to rectify errors and advance toward victory in programming. However, these messages are often hard to understand and pose an obstruction to progress for many beginners. Descriptive messages are helpful for students in the beginning phase of learning a programming language. In this article the effect of error messages presentation on debugging and programming score is analyzed. The controlled experiment suggests that presentation of error messages can have a strong effect on debugging score and also helpful to increase the programming score. However, no correlation between debugging score and programming score is identified. On the whole a positive impact of the descriptive error messages is observed during the study.

Keywords

• compiler error messages; Java; introductory programming; debugging