Print Email Facebook Twitter Do Code Smells Hamper Novice Programming? Title Do Code Smells Hamper Novice Programming? Author Hermans, F. Aivaloglou, E. Faculty Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science Department Software Technology Date 2016-03-31 Abstract Recently, block-based programming languages like Alice, Scratch and Blockly have become popular tools for programming education. There is substantial research showing that block-based languages are suitable for early programming education. But can block-based programs be smelly too? And does that matter to learners? In this paper we explore the code smells metaphor in the context of block-based programming language Scratch. We conduct a controlled experiment with 61 novice Scratch programmers, in which we divided the novices into three groups. One third receive a non-smelly program, while the other groups receive a program suffering from the Duplication or the Long Method smell respectively. All subjects then perform the same comprehension tasks on their program, after which we measure their time and correctness. The results of the experiment show that code smell indeed influence performance: subjects working on the program exhibiting code smells perform significantly worse, but the smells did not affect the time subjects needed. Investigating different types of tasks in more detail, we find that Long Method mainly decreases system understanding, while Duplication decreases the ease with which subjects modify Scratch programs. To reference this document use: http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:9ed35b89-c173-4435-b713-432336299b70 Publisher Delft University of Technology, Software Engineering Research Group ISSN 1872-5392 Source Report TUD-SERG-2016-06 Part of collection Institutional Repository Document type report Rights © 2016 The Author(s) . Software Engineering Research Group, Department of Software Technology, Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science, Delft University of Technology Files PDF TUD-SERG-2016-006.pdf 931.69 KB Close viewer /islandora/object/uuid:9ed35b89-c173-4435-b713-432336299b70/datastream/OBJ/view