<img style="border: none; background:none; width: 0; height: 0;" src="https://share.polymail.io/v2/z/a/NWNiNjY5NTkxNTUz/ydASvuYrOlXtL8ukZ4w2VbUxFM1Xq0tqUI3rAwEd3TKlwGzYqCozg1NICvSb2Du9Ru67l87n80Mh0JcLbfYFOoqLBwx0kWRxKXsAc36K4zL4bjxbJx216zVolTUgQxxtXzZwAaBjs--3RwRNOIf2MYWq6nT_Ok0=.png" alt="" width="0px" height="0px" border="0" /><div>Might be interesting to some?<br><br></div><div id="psignature"><span style="font-size: 14px; color: rgb(73, 79, 80); font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', san-serif; line-height: 21px;">—</span><div style="font-size: 14px; color: rgb(73, 79, 80); font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', san-serif; line-height: 21px;">
<div>Trijeet Mukhopadhyay</div>
<div>Stanford University</div>
<div>B.S. Computer Science</div>
<div>M.S. Candidate Computer Science – Human Computer Interaction</div>
<div><a href="http://trijeetm.com/">http://trijeetm.com/</a></div>
</div>
<div style="font-size: 14px; color: rgb(73, 79, 80); font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', san-serif; line-height: 21px;">
</div></div><br data-pm-history="5cb669591553fe618a000007-history-marker"><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr">---------- Forwarded message ---------<br>From: Will Crichton <wcrichto@cs.stanford.edu><br>Date: Tue, Apr 16th, 2019 at 4:13 PM<br>Subject: Programming and psychology reading group<br>To: <hci-students@lists.stanford.edu><br></div><br><br><u></u><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div>
<div dir="ltr">Hi everyone, I'm starting a reading group for papers relating to programming and psychology. We're interested in understanding the cognitive processes that underlie programming, and using insights about cognition to inform the design of programmable systems.<div><br><div>If you're interested, we're going to meet <b>Monday 3pm-4pm in Gates 315</b> for now (I know this conflicts with James' group meeting, so this will probably change soon). Sign up for our mailing list to see scheduling and announcements:</div><div><br></div><div><a href="mailto:programming-psychology@lists.stanford.edu" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">programming-psychology@lists.stanford.edu</a><br></div><div><br></div><div>Below is the message I sent out with details for next week. Please send me a note if you'd like to join!</div><div><br></div><div>====================================</div><div><br></div><div><div>Hi everyone, here's the papers we're reading for next week along with a characteristic excerpt. These are lengthy papers, about 70 pages between the three of them, so I would get started soon!<br></div></div><div><div class="plkdxr1fjt6lw-gmail-adn ps9v10y495k64-gmail-ads" style="border-left:none;padding:0px;display:flex;font-family:Roboto,RobotoDraft,Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;font-size:medium"><div class="prb19e47r5bdx-gmail-gs" style="margin:0px;padding:0px 0px 20px;width:1328px"><div class="pase6s2a1lh3c-gmail-"><div id="p36dlr25n15cq-gmail-:2js" class="p3bsdjtuker35-gmail-ii pdrcedx4qofao-gmail-gt" style="font-size:12.8px;direction:ltr;margin:8px 0px 0px;padding:0px"><div id="pox71jm3bkmo6-gmail-:2jt" class="px082j9vf4tum-gmail-a3s pai2n4d83fgp1-gmail-aXjCH" style="overflow:hidden;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-stretch:normal;font-size:small;line-height:1.5;font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div><br><blockquote style="margin:0px 0px 0px 40px;border:none;padding:0px"> </blockquote>Simon, Herbert A., and Allen Newell. “Human Problem Solving: The State of the Theory in 1970.” American Psychologist 26, no. 2 (1971): 145–59. <br><a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1971-24266-001" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1971-24266-001</a></div><div><br></div></div><blockquote style="margin:0px 0px 0px 40px;border:none;padding:0px"><div dir="ltr"><div>Problem solving was regarded by many, at that time, as a mystical, almost magical, human activity —as though the preservation of human dignity depended on man's remaining inscrutable to himself, on the magic-making processes remaining unexplained. ... American behaviorism has been properly skeptical of "mentalism"—of attempts to explain thinking by vague references to vague entities and processes hidden beyond reach of observation within the skull. ... The programmability of the theories is the guarantor of their operationality, an iron-clad insurance against admitting magical entities into the head. The basic characteristics of the human information-processing system that shape its problem-solving efforts are easily stated: serial processing, small short-term memory, infinite long-term memory with fast retrieval but slow storage.<br></div></div></blockquote><div dir="ltr"><div><br></div><div>Sheil, B. A. “The Psychological Study of Programming.” ACM Computing Surveys, 1981.<br><a href="https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=356840" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=356840</a><br><blockquote style="margin:0px 0px 0px 40px;border:none;padding:0px"> </blockquote><br><blockquote style="margin:0px 0px 0px 40px;border:none;padding:0px"> </blockquote></div></div><blockquote style="margin:0px 0px 0px 40px;border:none;padding:0px"><div dir="ltr"><div>The unimpressive results of behavioral research on programming could simply be the results of sloppy methodology, of a poor choice of hypotheses from computer science, and of the considerable practical difficulty of investigating complex behavior. ... They give no account of the most salient single fact about programming, which is that the difficulty of programming is a very nonlinear function of the size of the problem. ... More fundamentally, programming is clearly a learned skill, and, therefore, what is easy or difficult is much more a function of what skills an individual has learned than of any inherent quality of the task. High individual variances, strong practice effects, and (consequently) weak findings are exactly what one would expect from studying the average performance of highly learned skills across diverse collections of individuals. </div></div></blockquote><div dir="ltr"><div><blockquote style="margin:0px 0px 0px 40px;border:none;padding:0px"> </blockquote><br><blockquote style="margin:0px 0px 0px 40px;border:none;padding:0px"> </blockquote>Davies, Simon P. “Models and Theories of Programming Strategy.” International Journal of Man-Machine Studies, 1993.<br><a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0020737383710618" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0020737383710618<br></a></div><div><a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0020737383710618" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer"><br></a></div></div></div><blockquote style="margin:0px 0px 0px 40px;border:none;padding:0px"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div>While many studies have demonstrated the importance of strategic knowledge, they have not presented a unified characterization of the nature of programming strategy. ... One can derive different, and often conflicting, predictions from these models about the strategy that will be adopted by programmers. ... The picture that emerges contrasts knowledge about what steps to take to achieve a goal with understanding of the appropriate circumstances in which to apply those steps. All too often generic theories of expertise have made simplifying assumptions about the nature of problem-solving knowledge and have tended to emphasize specific forms of knowledge over others.</div></div></div></blockquote><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div><a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0020737383710618" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer"><br></a></div><div>These papers are mostly surveys/reviews of prior work. I selected them because they each contain different ideas and criticisms and they span the three decades where most of the relevant research was done in this area. I've read through the first two and they're great--the third I haven't read yet so I'm not sure, but it's the only sizable review of 1980s work I could find that wasn't a book. Some questions to think about as you read through these papers.</div><div><ul><li style="margin-left:15px">What are the different aspects of programming that each paper is attempting to understand? </li><br class="pj96t0ssk73k7-gmail-m_5803358008933634418gmail-Apple-interchange-newline"><li style="margin-left:15px">For experiments/studies, what is the methodology? How generalizable are the outcomes? How controlled are the conditions?<br><br></li><li style="margin-left:15px">For models/theories, what is the assumed cognitive structure? How close does the model match observed data?<br></li></ul><div>See you all next week, 3pm-4pm in Gates 315.</div></div></div></div></div><div class="plfwgo0l2w831-gmail-yj6qo"> </div><div class="pcutamxv40lij-gmail-adL"> </div></div></div><div class="pcim8hkdp6m89-gmail-hi" style="border-bottom-left-radius:1px;border-bottom-right-radius:1px;padding:0px;width:auto;background:rgb(242,242,242);margin:0px"> </div></div></div><div class="px55g8el837xo-gmail-ajx" style="clear:both"> </div></div><div class="pmq43r0otoa1k-gmail-gA ptqy9f0714nkx-gmail-gt pjkv72k1ln6e1-gmail-acV" style="font-size:12.8px;padding:0px;width:auto;border-bottom-left-radius:0px;border-bottom-right-radius:0px;border-top:none;margin:0px;background-image:url('https://img.polymail.co/sAN3bobETllDkwcN0-xT1fXDZSXWk4CDU4oBcKOjGzps=/initial');background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial;font-family:"><div class="pmfuk185t27mh-gmail-gB p8nju9uoqrai1-gmail-xu" style="border-top:0px;padding:0px"><div class="p7vhssu6p1kip-gmail-ip pv59nlemj8vai-gmail-iq" style="clear:both;margin:0px;padding:16px 0px;border-top:none"><br class="p4py28kov2lxt-gmail-Apple-interchange-newline"></div></div></div></div></div></div>
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