Software Design - Cognitive Aspects

Historical Background: The 1970s. Second Period. Recent Thematic Developments.
- What Is a Computer Program? Definition of a Program. Program v. Text. Programming Languages v. Natural Languages. Towards a Broader Definition.
- Software Design: Theoretical Approaches: Features of the Problems of Program Design. Knowledge-Centred Approaches. Strategy-Centred Approach. Organisation-Centred Approach. Modelling the Expert. Making Tools More Suitable for Programmers. Future Research.
- Software Reuse: Analytical Reasoning Models. Cognitive Mechanisms Employed in Reuse. Cognitive Classification of Reuse Situations. Future Research.
- Design and Reuse of Object-Oriented Software: The Effect of a Programming Paradigm: Cognitive Implications of OO: Hypotheses. Object-Oriented Design. Reuse in the OO Paradigm. Future Research.
- Understanding Software: Models of Text Understanding. Program Comprehension Seen as Text Understanding. Program Comprehension Seen as Problem Solving. Conclusions and Practical Implications.
- Understanding Software: Effects of the Task and the Textual Structure: Influence of the Task. Effect of the Textual Structure. Practical Implications.
- The Future for Programming Psychology: Prospects for the Software Community. Contributions to Cognitive Psychology.
- References.
- Index.

From the reviews:

From the reviews:

"This book explains the current state of knowledge in the field of programming psychology and the psychology of software design, reuse, and maintenance. Although largely concerned with academic research, the material presented may be of interested for both the accomplished and novice software practitioner. The research results given should ... have some impact on ergonomic specifications of programming tools, in order to ameliorate the compatibility between tools and user. ... The book is a lucid account of the cognitive problems in everyday software design ... ." (R. Horsch, Zentralblatt MATH, Vol. 987 (12), 2002)

"The book is especially dedicated to two different groups of readers - computer professionals on the one hand and psychologists on the other hand. ... fortunately the author knows well both disciplines and the result is compact and not schizophrenic. Computer professionals can find in this book a lot of interesting ideas and confirmation of the sensed but in computer literature concealed coherence. ... The book can be useful also for a third yet unnamed group of readers - researchers in the area of design theory." (Tomas Brandejsky, Neural Network World, Vol. 12 (2), 2002)