Are visual programming languages better? The role of imagery in program comprehension

This paper presents one experiment to explain why and under which circumstances visual programming languages would be easier to understand than textual programming languages. Towards this goal we bring together research from psychology of programming and image processing. According to current theories of imagery processing imagery facilitates a quicker access to semantic information. Thus, visual programming languages should allow for quicker construction of a mental representation based on data #ow relationships of a program than procedural languages. To test this hypothesis the mental models of C and spreadsheet programmers were assessed in di!erent program comprehension situations. The results showed that spreadsheet programmers developed data #ow based mental representations in all situations, while C programmers seemed to access "rst a control #ow and then data #ow based mental representations. These results could help to expand theories of mental models from psychology of programming to account for the e!ect of imagery. ( 2001 Academic Press