Studying Professional Software Designers and their Use of Abstraction

Authors: Joann M. Atlee Michael W. Godfrey

Venue: NSF workshop on Studying Professional Software Design, 2010

Year: 2010

Abstract: In this paper, we study how three pairs of pro-fessional software developers use abstraction in the course of a two-hour design exercise. We devise a scheme for classifying abstractions according domain (e.g., problem domain vs. user-interface domain vs. computer-science domain), which enables us to better compare the developers' different uses of abstraction. We also examine how focusing on a particular domain (e.g., how the real-world really operates, or the formal definitions of computer-science concepts) sometimes hinders the developers' ability or willingness to abstract from those concepts.

BibTeX:

@inproceedings{joannm.atlee2010spsdatuoa,
    author = "Joann M. Atlee and Michael W. Godfrey",
    title = "Studying Professional Software Designers and their Use of Abstraction",
    year = "2010",
    booktitle = "Proceedings of NSF workshop on Studying Professional Software Design"
}

Plain Text:

Joann M. Atlee and Michael W. Godfrey, "Studying Professional Software Designers and their Use of Abstraction," NSF workshop on Studying Professional Software Design