There are repetitive patterns in strategies of manipulating source code. Forexample, modifying source code before acquiring knowledge of how a code worksis a depth-first style and reading and understanding before modifying sourcecode is a breadth-first style. To the extent we know there is no study on theinfluence of personality on them. The objective of this study is to understandthe influence of personality on programming styles. We did a correlationalstudy with 65 programmers at the University of Stuttgart. Academic achievement,programming experience, attitude towards programming and five personalityfactors were measured via self-assessed survey. The programming styles wereasked in the survey or mined from the software repositories. Performance inprogramming was composed of bug-proneness of programmers which was mined fromsoftware repositories, the grades they got in a software project course andtheir estimate of their own programming ability. We did statistical analysisand found that Openness to Experience has a positive association withbreadth-first style and Conscientiousness has a positive association withdepth-first style. We also found that in addition to having more programmingexperience and better academic achievement, the styles of working depth-firstand saving coarse-grained revisions improve performance in programming.
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