ISECON Conference

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ISECON Conference

• Determining suitable programming language for the
  Bachelors degree in Information Technology in
  tertiary institutions.
• By Johnson Dehinbo
• Tshwane University of Technology
• Pretoria. South Africa

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Tshwane University is a merger of 3 Technikons
in Pretoria, Ga-Rankwa Soshanguve satelite
campuses in Pietersburg, Witbank Nelspruit
(Pic. belowAdmin building in Pretoria campus)
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Background of the Problem

• Various programming languages such as Basic,
  Fortran, Pascal, Cobol, C, C, and Visual Basic
  have been used in the past.
• Some are difficult to learn some poorly suited
  for future complex tasks. It is very important
  for student to be trained using an easy-to-use
  programming language that will be most suitable
  for their future tasks.

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GOAL To identify programming language that will
be

• relatively easy for beginners to write
• and broad enough to fill the 3 to 4 year
  curriculum while at the same time offer some
  prospects for future industrial use and research.
  

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ObjectivesTo investigate

• Ease of use.
• Ease of learning
• Suitability for complex jobs
• Line of Codes (LOC)

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Literature review Other related Studies

• Some related studies were conducted to compare
  different systems, without using any
  scientifically valid methodology or approach.
• Other similar studies used a specific approach to
  compare systems, without utilizing the benefit of
  dual approaches.

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METHODOLOGY

• Survey using questionnaires
• Experimental
• A Program problem was given to respondents to
  solve
• Min LOC for the solutions in each programming
  language was obtained

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Populations

• Students Experienced users of C
• Students Experienced users of VB
• Students Experienced users of Java
• Students Experienced users of Progs like
  Pascal, Basic or C
• (At Institutions Industries in Gauteng)

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Sampling

• 20 respondents from the ff stratas
• Technikon Northern Gauteng
• Tecknikon North West
• Technikon Pretoria
• Technikon Witwatersrand
• University of Pretoria
• Programmers in the Gauteng economic hub

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Hypothesis

• H0There is no significant difference in the ease
  of use, ease of learning and Suitability for
  complex jobs, for each of the programming
  languages.
• H0 ?C ?Java ?VB ?OtherLangs
• H1?C ? ?Java ? ?VB ? ?OtherLangs
• There is significant difference in the ease of
  use, ease of learning and Suitability for complex
  jobs, for each of the programming languages.

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DISCUSSION OF RESULTS

• Ease of Learning

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DISCUSSION contd

• Ease of use under pressure

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DISCUSSION contd

• Suitability for complex works

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DISCUSSION contd

• Overall rating

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Program for L.O.C estimation

• VB LOC 8
• Private Sub cmdCalculate_Click()
• Dim intLength As Integer, intbreadth As Integer
• Dim lngArea As Long
• intLength Val(txtLength.Text)
• intbreadth Val(txtBreadth.Text)
• lngArea intLength intbreadth
• txtarea.Text lngArea
• End Sub

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DISCUSSION of L.O.C

• LOC estimation
• Java LOC 10
• C LOC 9
• VB LOC 8
• Pascal LOC 10

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Why VB has minimum L.O.C.

• Drag Drop facility?

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Summary of Findings

• Pascal is simple to write for beginners, but not
  suitable for complex tasks
• VB is easy to use under work pressure possibly
  due to the "drag and drop program generating"
  facility
• VB has the smallest LOC.
• Pascal also have reasonable LOC (8) minus the
  "begin" and "end

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Summary of Findings contd

• Pascal is simple to write for beginners, but not
  suitable for complex tasks
• Java however has the longest LOC, making it more
  difficult for beginners to learn
• Like VB, Java is suitable for complex jobs and is
  considered very flexible as it interfaces with
  other web technologies

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CONCLUSION

• The above findings therefore show that no single
  language can adequately satisfy all the
  requirements. But a careful combination of the
  languages can achieve the desired result
• there is no significant difference in the factors
  studied for C, Visual Basic and Java.

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Implication on C pass rate

• The study therefore concluded that the low pass
  rate for C is not due to C being an
  exceptionally difficult language, as there is no
  significant difference in the factors studied for
  C, Visual Basic and Java.

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WHAT THEN? Recommendations

• Program Design should be immediately translated
  into programming language in the same subject and
  not in a separate subject. This will therefore
  mean that C programming in the first year will
  be divided into two components namely
• Program design plus the lexical structure, and
  control structures.
• Functions, Arrays and Pointers.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

• Thanks to the Netherlands fund for Research
  Capacity Building project that sponsored this
  study to improve research efforts in previously
  disadvantaged Technikons in South Africa.

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Thank You for Listening