Visually Analyzing Students' Gaze on C++ Code Snippets

Abstract

The paper presents an eye tracking study with 17 students (12 novices, 5 non-novices) reading C++ methods. The novices were students who participated in the study during the last week of their semester learning C++. The non-novices were senior students who had been exposed to programming before. We report on the reading behavior of three C++ methods that use different language constructs. We analyze fixations at the line level of the code using visualizations to derive insights into code reading. Results show that most transitions were made to code lines that are close to the current line read. We observe that a large percentage of the total fixation duration is made on a small number of lines and that related lines are often viewed together in a series of short fixations.

Development of Program Comprehension Skills by Novice Programmers – Longitudinal Eye Tracking Studies

“…The obtained findings suggest that FDA and SAA are parameters sensitive to the development of program code understanding. This observation is consistent with reports from the studies where patterns of reading of the program code by novice and non-novice programmers were compared and it has been found out that non-novices have more transitions that span multiple lines, so their patterns are characterized by longer saccades (Peterson et al, 2019).…”