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 & Computing, 21(3) pp. 171–183.

Full text available as:

Preview

PDF (Accepted Manuscript) - Requires a PDF viewer such as GSview, Xpdf or Adobe Acrobat Reader
Download (450kB)

DOI (Digital Object Identifier) Link:	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvlc.2009.11.001
Google Scholar:	Look up in Google Scholar

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 Item

2010 Elsevier Ltd

ISSN:

1045-926X

Project Funding Details:

Funded Project Name	Project ID	Funding Body
Not Set	GR/J48689	EPSRC (Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council)
Wolfson Research Merit Award	Not Set	Royal Society
Not Set	AF/98/0597	EPSRC (Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council)

Keywords:

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

Academic Unit/School:

Faculty of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) > Computing and Communications
Faculty of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM)

Interdisciplinary Research Centre:

Centre for Research in Computing (CRC)

Item ID:

19648

Depositing User:

Marian Petre

Date Deposited:

03 Feb 2010 10:33

Last Modified:

28 Jul 2017 09:20

URI:

http://oro.open.ac.uk/id/eprint/19648

Share this page:

Altmetrics

Download history for this item

These details should be considered as only a guide to the number of downloads performed manually. Algorithmic methods have been applied in an attempt to remove automated downloads from the displayed statistics but no guarantee can be made as to the accuracy of the figures.

Actions (login may be required)

CORE (COnnecting REpositories)

Policies | Disclaimer