SIREN SONGS AND SWAN SONGS

摘要

This research indicates that music can communicate information about program flow and assist with bug identification and eradication. The results highlight two areas where music seems particularly useful: where the program's output contains no clues as to the bug's location and where programs contain complex Boolean expressions. Otherwise, when the output gives clues (when, say, a loop displays only three lines of output instead of an expected 10), then a bug's location is relatively easy to deduce. However, when the program gives no such clue, it is more difficult to hypothesize about the bug's location. The auralization quickly shows it is the loop that is at fault. In the case of multiple complex Boolean expressions, the auralization made it easy to hear which ones were at fau without auralization, subjects had to evaluate the expressions by hand. Now that we have shown that musical auralizations can be used by programmers, the next step is to see how auralizations compare with visualizations. We have looked at program flow, but what about data flow and data structure? How might sound assist our understanding of these features?