A Principled Approach to the Evaluation of SV : a case-study in Prolog

A large amount of Software Visualization (SV) technology has been developed This is particularly the case for the Prolog programming language whose execution model causes particular difficulties for the learner (e.g. Taylor, 1988; Fung et al; 1990; Schertz et al, 1990). As a result, a wide range of Prolog SVs (or tracers) exist and though many claims are made regarding their usefulness and suitability for various potential user populations there is little empirical evidence. This paper reports an empirical investigation into the suitability of four tracers for an early novice population.

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