Does continuous visual feedback aid debugging in direct-manipulation programming systems?
Eric Wilcox, John William Atwood, Margaret Burnett, J. J. Cadiz, Carson Cook · 1997
Continuous visual feedback is becoming a common feature in direct-manipulation programming systems of all klndsfrom demonstrational macro builders to spreadsheet packages to visual programming languages featuring direct manipulation.But does continuous visual feedback actually help in the domain of programming?There has been little investigation of this question, and what evidence there is from related domains points in conflicting directions.To advance what is known about this issue, we conducted an empirical study to determine whether the inclusion of continuous visual feedback into a direct-manipulation programming system helps with one particular task: debugging.Our results were that although continuous visual feedback did not significantly help with debugging in general, it did significantly help with debugging in some circumstances.Our results also indicate three factors that may help determine those circumstances.