Interactive fault localization techniques to empower the debugging efforts of end-user programmers

Graduation date: 2005End users develop more software than any other group of programmers, using\ud software authoring devices such as e-mail filtering editors, by-demonstration macro\ud builders, and spreadsheet environments. Despite this, there has been only a little\ud research on finding ways to help these programmers with the dependability of\ud the software they create. We have been working to address this problem in several\ud ways, one of which includes supporting end-user debugging activities through\ud interactive fault localization techniques. This thesis investigates these fault localization\ud techniques in the realm of end-user programming. We investigate a technique\ud previously described in the research literature, and two new techniques that are introduced\ud in this thesis. This thesis also presents the results of two empirical studies\ud to examine whether fault localization techniques are effective in end-user testing\ud and debugging tasks. The first study compares how well the three techniques isolate\ud the faults in two end-user programs. The second study examines the impact\ud of two orthogonal factors on the effectiveness of fault localization techniques. Our results reveal several insights into the contributions such techniques can make to the\ud end-user debugging process, and highlight key issues of interest to researchers and\ud practitioners who may design and evaluate future fault localization techniques