Does syntax highlighting help programming novices?

Program comprehension is an important skill for programmers - extending and debugging existing source code is part of the daily routine. Syntax highlighting is one of the most common tools used to support developers in understanding algorithms. However, most research on code highlighting is more tha...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:2018 IEEE/ACM 40th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE) p. 704
Main Authors: Hannebauer, Christoph, Hesenius, Marc, Gruhn, Volker
Format: Conference Proceeding
Language:English
Published: New York, NY, USA ACM 27.05.2018
Series:ACM Conferences
Subjects:
Code Colouring
Human computer interaction
Human-centered computing > Human computer interaction (HCI) > Empirical studies in HCI
Human-centered computing > Visualization > Empirical studies in visualization
IDE Interface
Program Comprehension
Programming
Software and its engineering > Software notations and tools > Development frameworks and environments > Integrated and visual development environments
Software engineering
Source Code Typography
Syntactics
Syntax Highlighting
Task analysis
Visualization
program comprehension
source code typography code colouring
syntax highlighting
IDE interface
ISBN:9781450356381, 1450356389
ISSN:1558-1225
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:Program comprehension is an important skill for programmers - extending and debugging existing source code is part of the daily routine. Syntax highlighting is one of the most common tools used to support developers in understanding algorithms. However, most research on code highlighting is more than 20 years old, when programmers used a completely different tool chain. Newer results on the effect of syntax highlighting as used in modern Integrated Development Environments (IDEs) are inconclusive.
ISBN:9781450356381
1450356389
ISSN:1558-1225
DOI:10.1145/3180155.3182554