The web holds an abundance of source code examples with the potential to become learning resources for any end-user. However, for some end-users these examples may be unusable. An example is unusable if a user cannot select the code in the example that corresponds to their interests. Research suggests that non-programmers struggle to correctly select the code responsible for interesting output functionality. In this paper we present Dinah: an interface to support non-programmers with selecting code causing graphical output. Dinah assists non-programmers by providing concurrency support and in-context affordances for statement replay and temporally based navigation.

End-user programmers, those who write code but lack for-mal training in computer science, are often reliant on various tools such as API documentation or searching the Web for information in order to complete a specific task. This study examines the information foraging behaviors of a group of web and graphic designers engaged in a series of code modi-fication tasks. We find that users were largely unsuccessful in their foraging activities, with few information seeking events resulting in noticeable changes to participants ’ source code. Participants viewed remarkably few results generated by their queries and rarely refined queries multiple times. However, these kinds of activities were positively correlated with task success metrics. We conclude with a discussion of the study’s results and their implications on the design of future program-ming environments and search tools for end-user program-mers. Author Keywords end-user programming, information foraging, search behaviors, novice programmers

Abstract — The wealth of code available through the web has the potential to dramatically change the way we learn to program. This includes inexperienced programmers, who may struggle to find code in example programs that relate to observable program features. We present a comparative study of three tools for assisting non-programmers with finding program code corresponding to a program’s graphical output. From this study we also identify a model which captures the goals inherent in non-programmers ’ code search processes for this type of search task. Our results suggest a global pause marker may be an effective tool to support non-programmers ’ search.