Six Learning Barriers in End-User Programming Systems

As programming skills increase in demand and utility, the learnability of end-user programming systems is of utmost importance. However, research on learning barriers in programming systems has primarily focused on languages, overlooking potential barriers in the environment and accompanying libraries. To address this, a study of beginning programmers learning Visual Basic.NET was performed. This identified six types of barriers: design, selection, coordination, use, understanding, and information. These barriers inspire a new metaphor of computation, which provides a more learner-centric view of programming system design.

1. Introduction

According to the U.S. Department of Labor, by 2012 30% of new jobs and nearly 8% of all U.S. jobs could require programming skills [1]. This is a dramatic shift for a skill that less than a million people had 10 years ago. Now, an increasing number of end-user programmers control manufacturing robots, create spreadsheets, and design interactive prototypes.