Summary

Programming, and software development more broadly, was the first focus of research in humancomputer interaction (e.g., Shneiderman, 1980). These pioneering investigations, carried out under the banner of “software psychology”, focused on problems of professional programmers. The scope of this research was quite broad, encompassing topics like team organization and management, individual differences, and design problem-solving. Teaching and learning were only a small part of this project. Thus, Shneiderman (1980: 54) briefly contrasted syntactic-oriented drill-and-practice with language-independent problem-solving as paradigms for programming education, but no research presented in his book addressed this or any other teaching and learning issue.