Abstract
A knowledge elicitation project was conducted to provide material for a course in software system debugging skills. Although the results confirmed aspects of the general model of human expertise in the cognitive science literature, focusing on the critical role of strategy, of creating a cognitive model of the problem domain, and of metacognition, there also were less expected findings. In particular, the importance of social skills was highlighted, even for so technical a task as code reading. In the industrial environment, expert debuggers are aware of the social contexts both of the environment in which the original code was written and in which the debugging is being done. This knowledge is useful in selecting paths of investigation and also in making efficient use of human resources in debugging.
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© 1991 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Riedl, T.R., Weitzenfeld, J.S., Freeman, J.T., Klein, G.A., Musa, J. (1991). What we have learned about software engineering expertise. In: Tomayko, J.E. (eds) Software Engineering Education. SEI 1991. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 536. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0024298
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0024298
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