PROGRAMMERS PERFORMANCE ON STRUCTURED VERSUS NONSTRUCTURED FUNCTION DEFINITIONS

A control-flow model for functional programs is used in an experimenta l comparison of the performance of programmers on structured versus no nstructured Miranda function definitions. The performance is taken as a measure of the comprehensibility of functional programs. The experim ental set-up is similar to the Scanlan study (1989). However, in the p resent study, a two-factor repeated measures design is used in the sta tistical analysis. The control-flow model appears to be useful in the shaping of the experiment. A significantly better performance has been found for structured function definitions on both dependent variables : the time needed to answer questions about the function definitions a nd the proportion correct answers. Moreover, for structured function d efinitions, a counter-intuitive result has been obtained: there are si gnificantly fewer errors in lar er definitions than in smaller ones.