Introducing Code Quality at CS1 Level: Examples and Activities

Characterising code quality is a challenge that was addressed by a previous ITiCSE Working Group (Börstler et al., 2017). As emerged from that study, educators, developers, and students have different perceptions of the aspects involved. The perception of code quality by CS1 students develops from the feedback they receive when submitting practical work. As a consequence of increasingly large classes and the widespread use of autograders, student code is predominantly assessed based on functional correctness, emphasising a machine-oriented perspective with scarce or no feedback given about human-oriented aspects of code quality. Such limited perception of code quality may negatively impact how students understand, create, and interact with code artefacts. Although Börstler et al. concluded that "code quality should be discussed more thoroughly in educational programs", the lack of materials and time constraints have slowed down progress in that regard.

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Publication Details

Published
2025-01-22
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1145/3689187.3709615
Citations
7
Primary Topic
Software Engineering Research
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
22.72
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article

Introducing Code Quality at CS1 Level: Examples and Activities

Ryan Crosby, Richard Glassey, Georgiana Haldeman, Stephanos Matsumoto et al.
7 citations
Software Engineering Research
22.72
article

Introducing Code Quality at CS1 Level: Examples and Activities

Ryan Crosby, Richard Glassey, Georgiana Haldeman, Stephanos Matsumoto, Cruz Izu, Harold Connamacher, David Liu, Anshul Shah, Claudio Mirolo, Andrew Luxton-Reilly, Seán Russell, Olli Kiljunen, Amruth N. Kumar, Jürgen Börstler, Eduardo Oliveira
article en
7 citations

Abstract

Characterising code quality is a challenge that was addressed by a previous ITiCSE Working Group (Börstler et al., 2017). As emerged from that study, educators, developers, and students have different perceptions of the aspects involved. The perception of code quality by CS1 students develops from the feedback they receive when submitting practical work. As a consequence of increasingly large classes and the widespread use of autograders, student code is predominantly assessed based on functional correctness, emphasising a machine-oriented perspective with scarce or no feedback given about human-oriented aspects of code quality. Such limited perception of code quality may negatively impact how students understand, create, and interact with code artefacts. Although Börstler et al. concluded that "code quality should be discussed more thoroughly in educational programs", the lack of materials and time constraints have slowed down progress in that regard.

University College Dublin (IE), University of Udine (IT), Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering (US), University of Auckland (NZ), Ramapo College (US), University of Toronto (CA), Durham University (GB), Utrecht University (NL), University of California San Diego (US), Colgate University (US), Blekinge Institute of Technology (SE), The University of Adelaide (AU), Case Western Reserve University (US), The College of New Jersey (US), KTH Royal Institute of Technology (SE), Aalto University (FI)
Openalex Percentile: Top 1%
Software Engineering Research
22.72
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