Considerable effort and expense have been devoted to developing tools that support parallel programming. Recent evidence suggests that users do not find the current generation of tools useful for their program development needs, but offers no guidance on how that problem might be addressed. This paper reports the results of a survey applied to a significant (N=448) cross-section of the parallel user community at Supercomputing '93. The responses establish a number of general patterns in program development and tool use among scientists, engineers, and computer scientists. Our analysis suggests several likely directions for future tool development efforts.

Software development remains mentally challenging despite the continual advancement of training, techniques, and tools. Because completely automating software development is currently impossible, it makes sense to seriously consider how tools can improve the mental activities of developers apart from automating them away. Such mental assistance can be called “cognitive support”. Understanding and developing cognitive support in software engineering tools is an important research issue but, unfortunately, at the moment our theoretical foundations for it are inadequately developed. Furthermore, much of the relevant research has occurred outside of the software engineering community, and is therefore not easily available to the researchers who typically develop software engineering tools. Tool evaluation, comparison, and development are consequently impaired. The present work introduces a theoretical framework intended to seed further systematic study of cognitive support in the field of software engineering tools. This theoretical framework, called RODS, imports ideas and methods from a field of cognitive science called “distributed cognition”. The crucial concept in RODS is that cognitive support can be understood and explained in terms of the computational advantages that are conferred when cognition is redistributed between software developer and their tools and environment. The name RODS, in fact, comes from the

Kerr, MacCoun, & Kramer, 1996). Teamwork is not guaranteed to provide either of these advantages. With respect to (1) combining complementary inputs, increasing the size of an organization tends to reduce its overall efficiency unless there is also an increase in departmentalization and standardization of tasks (Blau, 1970). The latter features, however, reduce flexibility of response in a changing or novel environment (Donaldson, 1995). A related problem is goal displacement, in which specialized units lose sight of the larger organizational purpose, and pursue their own goals as if they were fixed ends rather than means, which should be reevaluated when conditions change (Scott, 1998). With respect to (2) better decisions, groups may be affected by socialization biases, such as groupthink, which induce conformity rather than diversity of thought (Janus, 1972; March, 1996.). For this reason, group decisions tend to be better when individuals think about the problem independently befo

Two experiments examined the content of novice and expert representations for both surface and deep structural elements of arithmetic equations. Experiment 1, which used a forcedchoice categorization task in which surface features of equations (e.g., digits) competed with deep structural principles of mathematics (associativity and commutativity), found that experts were more likely to focus on principles in their judgments than were novices, who focused more often on surface elements. Experiment 2, using a similar task, introduced trials in which only principled elements varied. Novices were able to focus on principled elements in this case, but failed to transfer these representations when surface features were reintroduced.

Most software reuse research has ignored the role of the software engineer. However, software engineers tend to be better reasoners and have more experiences to recall than tool-based reuse mechanisms. This paper argues for integrating software engineers into existing reuse paradigms and providing tool support to assist problem description and component understanding, selection and adaptation. However, empirical studies indicate that these reuse tasks are difficult, even for experienced software engineers. Therefore, guidelines and a high-level architecture for design of tool support are based on reports of behaviour and problems arising during reuse. 1: Introduction Many technical solutions to software reuse problems have failed to result in widespread reuse. One reason may be that these solutions ignore human involvement. This paper investigates specific problems which arise from excluding software developers from the reuse process and proposes solutions based on human involvement fo...

The cognitive process of analogical reasoning has generally been thought to occur in at least three stages: retrieval of a source description from memory, mapping of that source description to the target description, and transfer of relationships from source to target. Here we are concerned with the first stage, the retrieval of relevant sources from long-term memory for their use in analogical reasoning. Specifically we ask: what can people retrieve from long-term memory when stimulated by a description of some situation, and how do they do it? Psychological experiments suggest that subjects display two sorts of retrieval patterns: a novice pattern and an expert pattern. Those subjects that show the novice pattern are much more likely to retrieve so-called merely-apparently-similar sources to a target description rather than analogically-related sources. Merelyapparently-similar sources for a target are characterized by the two descriptions sharing superficial features, such as the types or identities of objects or actors involved, whereas in an analogical relationship the source and target share description structure that is useful for making analogical inferences. In contrast to those who show the novice pattern, those subjects who show the expert pattern are much more likely to retrieve analogically-related sources to a target stimulus, as long as the target and sources fall into a domain in which

The literature on expertise is wide-ranging, both across many domains and within software development, however when findings from these are contrasted with literature on experience in pair programming, some startling differences become apparent. For example, knowledge seems to be a key feature in obtaining expertise, however there is little mention of core programming knowledge as a measure of expertise in the pair programming literature. This paper discusses these discrepancies, along with findings on the reliability of various types of rating, to provide context for the presentation of data from a survey of commercial pair programmers which aims to help clarify what factors are considered good indicators of pair programming expertise by different groups.

When students are given code that is very similar in structure or purpose, how well do they actually recognise the similarities and differences? As part of the BRACElet project, a multi-institutional investigation into reading and comprehension skills of novice programmers, students were asked to classify four code segments that found the minimum or maximum in an array of numbers. This paper reports on the analysis of responses to this question and draws conclusions about the students ’ ability to recognise the similarities and differences in example code. It then raises questions with respect to an approach to teaching that uses variations in code examples.

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This text adopts a cognitive viewpoint on design, focusing on individually conducted activities actually implemented in professional, industrial design projects. It presents elements for a cognitive descriptive model of design that, on the one hand, furthers our understanding of design, and on the other hand, offers elements to people who wish to use such knowledge in order to advance education and practice of professional designers. The text is especially concerned with dynamic aspects of design —that is, it focuses on the activity implemented by designers, especially the cognitive processes and/or strategies they use — rather than with static aspects. Section 1 presents the classical cognitive viewpoint on design, that is, the symbolic information-processing (SIP) approach, represented by Herbert A. Simon. Section 2 focuses on the main alternative to the SIP approach for design, i.e. the "situativity " (SIT) approach, mainly represented by Donald Schön. Section 3 is the main division of this text. It presents nuances and critiques with respect to both SIP and SIT approaches, and completes and integrates these two approaches into our own cognitively oriented dynamic approach to design.