Browsing by Author "Karimi, Zahra"

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Open Access
The influence of personality on computer programming: a summary of a systematic literature review
(2014) Karimi, Zahra; Wagner, Stefan
The objective of this report is to summarize the results of the systematic literature review we recently did on the influence of personality on computer programming (Karimi et al. 2014). In the SLR, we systematically searched online search resources and found 50 empirical and 4 theoretical studies with findings on the relations between personality characteristics and performance in computer programming. 28 empirical studies found an influence of personality on programming. We discussed that the other studies failed to find an influence of personality because of ceiling or bottom effects, small samples or incomprehensive personality test. We further analyzed the studies that found a relation and mapped the investigated personality characteristics of 22 empirical studies (out of 28) and 3 theoretical studies (out of 4) to the five personality factors: Openness, Conscientiousness, Extroversion, Agreeableness and Neuroticism. Due to inaccessible or invalid personality tests, we excluded several studies from this mapping. We found that either in theoretical or empirical studies all personality factors have an effect in at least one study. Except Conscientiousness which always has positive effects, other personality factors may have positive or negative effects. Moreover, all personality factors might have no effect in some cases. We concluded that there is an indication that personality affects programming but this relation is not clear and more studies are needed to clarify the influence of personality on programming.
Open Access
Links between the personalities, styles and performance in computer programming
(2015) Karimi, Zahra; Baraani-Dastjerdi, Ahmad; Ghasem-Aghaee, Nasser; Wagner, Stefan
There are repetitive patterns in strategies of manipulating source code. For example, modifying source code before acquiring knowledge of how a code works is a depth-first style whereas reading and understanding before modifying source code is a breadth-first style. To the extent we know, there is no study on the influence of personality on them. The objective of this study is to understand the influence of personality on programming styles. We did a correlational study with 65 programmers at the University of Stuttgart. Academic achievement, programming experience, attitude towards programming, and five personality factors were measured via self-assessed survey. The programming styles were asked for in the survey or mined from the software repositories. Performance in programming was composed of bug-proneness of programmers which was mined from software repositories, the grades they got in a software project course and their estimate of their own programming ability. In a statistical analysis we found that Openness to Experience has a positive association with breadth-first style and Conscientiousness has a positive association with depth-first style. We also found that, in addition to having more programming experience and better academic achievement, the styles of working depth-first and saving coarse-grained revisions improve performance in programming.