Mental imagery and software visualization in high-performance software development teams

Petre, Marian (2010). Mental imagery and software visualization in high-performance software development teams. Journal of Visual Languages and Computing, 21(3) pp. 171–183.

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DOI (Digital Object Identifier) Link:	http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jvlc.2009.11.001

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Abstract

This paper considers the relationship between mental imagery and software visualization in professional, high-performance software development. It presents overviews of four empirical studies of professional software developers in high-performing teams: (1) expert programmers' mental imagery, (2) how experts externalize their mental imagery as part of teamwork, (3) experts' use of commercially available visualization software, and (4) what tools experts build themselves, how they use the tools they build for themselves, and why they build tools for themselves. Through this series of studies, the paper provides insight into a relationship between how experts reason about and imagine solutions, and their use of and requirements for external representations and software visualization. In particular, it provides insight into how experts use visualization in reasoning about software design, and how their requirements for the support of design tasks differ from those for the support of other software development tasks. The paper draws on theory from other disciplines to explicate issues in this area, and it discusses implications for future work in this field.

Item Type:

Journal Article

2010 Elsevier Ltd

ISSN:

1045-926X

External Project Funding Details:

Funded Project Name	Project ID	Funding Body
Not Set	Not Set	Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council [grant numbers GR/J48689 and AF/98/0597]
Not Set	Not Set	Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award

Keywords:

software visualization; empirical studies; high-performance programming; teamwork;

Academic Unit/Department:

Mathematics, Computing and Technology > Computing & Communications

Interdisciplinary Research Centre:

Centre for Research in Computing (CRC)

Item ID:

19648

Depositing User:

Marian Petre

Date Deposited:

03 Feb 2010 10:33