Exploring the Correlation between the Design and Use of Object–Oriented Frameworks

Object{oriented frameworks are often hard to learn and use [1, 3]. However, knowing only this is not enough to mitigate the problem. In contrast, we need answers to the following questions: what are the typical problems that programmers encounter most frequently? why are they problems? is there any correlation between these problems and the ways the frameworks are designed? is there any relation between these problems and the ways programmers perceive the design? In order to address these questions, we are studying the design and the use of the Swing framework, initially focusing on problems related to the JTree class. Although the project is far from completion, we have discovered several aspects that others may nd interesting to discuss with us.