Comparing mental models of novice programmers when using visual and command line environments

Improving the novice's experience with learning to program has been an important research topic for some time. Appropriate programming environments for novices have been one research area. For example, many departments have adopted visual environments to teach programming as opposed to a command line environment at the beginning stages of a CS curriculum. The features in standard command line environments are not as assistive to programmers as visual environments. Novices must learn both language syntax and semantics while navigating the file system and compilation tools. On the other hand, visual environments can enable novices to conduct the same behavior with one or more button clicks. However, the consistency and affordance of certain features in visual environments could cause novices to develop a false perception of programming. In addition, such features may impose the inability for novices to immediately adapt to less assistive environments. In contrast, command line environments may enable novices to develop better mental models for programming because of their limited features, which could also allow them to transition to other environments much easier. A protocol analysis was conducted on seven students from a CS1 course who learned Python using either IDLE or VIM. The objective was to record and analyze each student's behavior while they use the opposing environment to write a program. This study showed that students who originally used IDLE were not as equipped for transitioning to VIM as their counterparts who transitioned to IDLE.