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Using Machine Learning to Recognise Novice and Expert Programmers

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Product-Focused Software Process Improvement (PROFES 2021)

Abstract

Understanding and recognising the difference between novice and expert programmers could be beneficial in a wide range of scenarios, such as to screen programming job applicants. In this paper, we explore the identification of code author attributes to enable novice/expert differentiation via machine learning models. Our iteratively developed model is based on data from HackerRank, a competitive programming website. Multiple experiments were carried using 10-fold cross-validation. Our final model performed well by differentiating novice coders from expert coders with 71.3% accuracy.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    https://www.hackerrank.com/.

  2. 2.

    https://github.com/gabrielchl/novice-expert-dev-classifier-replication-package.

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Correspondence to Chi Hong Lee or Tracy Hall .

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Lee, C.H., Hall, T. (2021). Using Machine Learning to Recognise Novice and Expert Programmers. In: Ardito, L., Jedlitschka, A., Morisio, M., Torchiano, M. (eds) Product-Focused Software Process Improvement. PROFES 2021. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 13126. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-91452-3_13

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-91452-3_13

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-91451-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-91452-3

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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