When Visual Programs are Harder to Read than Textual Programs

When Visual Programs are Harder to Read than Textual Programs (1992)

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by T.R.G. Green , M. Petre

Venue:	In
Citations:	36 - 3 self

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Datum	Value	Source
TITLE	When Visual Programs are Harder to Read than Textual Programs	user correction - Legacy Corrections
AUTHOR NAME	T.R.G. Green	user correction - Legacy Corrections
AUTHOR AFFIL	MRC Applied Psychology Unit; 15 Chaucer Road	user correction - Legacy Corrections
AUTHOR ADDR	Cambridge CB2 2EF, U.K.	user correction - Legacy Corrections
AUTHOR NAME	M. Petre	user correction - Legacy Corrections
AUTHOR AFFIL	MRC Applied Psychology Unit; 15 Chaucer Road	user correction - Legacy Corrections
AUTHOR ADDR	Cambridge CB2 2EF, U.K.	user correction - Legacy Corrections
ABSTRACT	Claims for the virtues of visual programming languages have generally been strong, simple-minded statements that visual programs are inherently better than textual ones. They have paid scant attention to previous empirical literature showing difficulties in comprehending visual programs. This paper reports comparisons between the comprehensibility of textual and visual programs, drawing on the methods developed by Green (1977) for comparing detailed comprehensibility of conditional structures. The visual language studied was LabView, a circuit-diagram-like language which can express conditionals either as `forwards' structures (condition implies action, with nesting) or as `backwards' structures (action is governed by conditions, with boolean operators in place of nesting). Green (1977) found that forwards structures gave relatively better access to `sequential' information, and Gilmore and Green (1984) showed `backwards' structures gave relatively better access to `circumstantial' inf...	user correction - Legacy Corrections
YEAR	1992	INFERENCE
VENUE	In	INFERENCE
VENUE TYPE	CONFERENCE	INFERENCE
PAGES	167--180	INFERENCE
CITATIONS	18 found	ParsCit 1.0