Authors
Lisa L Ruan, Evan W Patton, Mike Tissenbaum
Publication date
2017
Journal
International conference on computational thinking education
Pages
2-5
Description
To understand computational thinking in App Inventor, it is important to be able to effectively evaluate computational complexity in block-based programming languages. In the past, there have been a handful of complexity measures proposed for text-based languages (Weyuker, 1988). In this paper, we will attempt to implement 2 such measures, Halstead’s Programming Effort and statement count, in App Inventor on a dataset of projects from 50 random users. The goal is to determine whether or not text programming standards for complexity can be generalized to block programming languages. This paper shows that the 2 complexity measures we implemented are not adequate measures for complexity in App Inventor. This result indicates a need for different measures of complexity that more accurately portray block programming proficiency. We hope this study will be a gateway into a better understanding of the intricacies of App Inventor’s block programming language and its unique contributions to the development of computational thinking.
Total citations
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Scholar articles
LL Ruan, EW Patton, M Tissenbaum - International conference on computational thinking …, 2017