Abstract:
This research studied novice programmers with some Pascal knowledge during their initial attempts at learning another programming language. [...] programming knowledge they had previously acquired and to determine how they were able to use this knowledge in learning a second language. We found that plan structure differences could be used to predict problems programmers encountered. This both strengthens the claim for plan knowledge and suggests some basis for tutoring development. Additionally, we discovered trends showing that when the language was more distant from the one programmers knew a bottom up or plan creation methodology was more successful than a plan retrieval process.
ppig-1992
An Analysis of Novice Programmers Leaming a Second Language