Experimental studies of flowchart use at different stages of program debugging

Abstract

Two experimental studies are described of the effect on performance of alternative program representations in different components of program debugging tasks. The use of diagrammatic notation provides useful information when the debugging task is mainly concerned with tracing execution flow in a program. In more complex tasks involving the identification of procedures commonly used under fault conditions, the use of flowcharts still increases the speed with which faults are identified, and reduces irrelevant testing, but does not reduce the incidence of errors likely to lead to inaccurate fault identification.