Abstract
A plan/goal analysis of computer programs is developed and partially tested. This approach combines the ideas of plan analysis and top-down design and provides a principled description of a computer program at increasing levels of specificity. Three types of description were used in a simple debugging task: plan, goal and complete (plan + goal). Subjects were given a buggy program and a description of that program and the time taken to correct the bug was recorded. Contrary to predictions, the plan description was the most useful program documentation for both novice and advanced programmers. It is theorized that while high-level descriptions allow a program's goals to be understood, plans are precisely the information required to debug the implementation of these goals. This plan approach integrates the use of PDL as both a program and a plan description language.
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