3 Software Metrics
In order to attempt to measure the difficulty of typical
code comprehension and code tracing examination
questions we first selected an appropriate set of software
metrics. Software metrics focus on a particular feature of
a program and are often devised with a single
programming paradigm in mind. Table 1 shows a set of
commonly employed software metrics classified by
metric type and their applicability to three programming
paradigms.
The examination questions that we have analysed are
from a CS1 (first semester) Java programming course.
The questions are typical code tracing and EiPE questions
that have been reported extensively in the recent literature
(e.g.: Venables, Tan and Lister 2009, Murphy, McCauley
and Fitzgerald 2012).