Most people think that computer programming is associated with math.
A recent study by Christian Kästner, assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon University, and Janet Siegmund, researcher at the University of Passau, showed that this isn’t completely true. Other brain areas than math/logic-associated ones are activated when programmers are looking at code: languages center are getting triggered (Siegmund et al.).
Earlier studies to understand programmers’ cognitive abilities used qualitative measures and self-reports. Now, the scientists directly measured programmers’ understanding of the code using fMRI imaging.
In this study, 17 undergrad computer engineering students were asked to interpret some lines of code while being in an fMRI machine.
First, all participants were asked to read Java code snippets of similar difficulty.
Secondly, the researchers subtracted imaging data from an error detection task and found that error detection did not stimulate activity in brain parts that activated by code interpretation task.
The results of this study are very intriguing revealing a relationship between reading code and the brain’s language centers, which verifies some evidence from previous studies.
The study may be important of the future of programming.
Kästner pointed out that with using the neuroscience approach it becomes maybe easier to determine what makes a really good programmer different from an average one.
Since decades it is known that there are computer engineers, so called 10Xers, who program more productively at higher quality and producing ten times more code or the same amount of code in a tenth of the time or do ten times more communication than other programmers. Every tech company tries to hire them.
Yet, the question why some programmers are so much better couldn’t be answered.
The connection is missing how these individuals got to the point excelling in their ability to produce code or whether one could train others to excel at similar levels.
Studying how code understanding differs among beginners, average professionals and 10Xers may allow to get a better knowledge about what makes a truly excellent programmer.
At the end it remains to mention, that computer science is more than just writing and understanding code.
Computer science is fundamentally grounded in logic and problem solving associated with mathematics and science, extending beyond learning a computer programming language.
However, the new study indicates that the language centers are heavily involved in understanding code and may determine how good and fast an engineer is able to produce computer programs.