Surely we must learn to read before we learn to write

Abstract

While analysing students' marks in some comparable code-reading and code-writing questions on a beginners' programming exam, we observed that the weaker students appeared to be able to write code with markedly more success than they could read it. Examination of a second data set from a different institution failed to confirm the observation, and appropriate statistical analysis failed to find any evidence for the conclusion. We speculate on the reasons for the lack of a firm finding, and consider what we might need to do next in order to more thoroughly explore the possibility of a relationship between the code-reading and code-writing abilities of novice programming students.