Source-level debugging with the whyline

The visualizations of the Whyline are presented, which focus on supporting the exploration a source code and how it executes. The visualization is concise, simple to navigate, and mimics syntactic features of its target programming language for consistency. Two studies showed that users with the visualization completed a debugging task twice as fast as users without the visualization, partly due to features of the visualization. Applications of the visualizations to tasks other than debugging are discussed. Categories and Subject Descriptors H.5.2 [User Interfaces]: User-centered design, interaction styles General Terms Human Factors

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2008
• Where: ICSE
• Authors: Andrew J. Ko, Brad A. Myers
• Keywords: Debugging Task, ICSE 2008, Mimics Syntactic Features, Software Engineering, Terms Human Factors