Project description
Brains On Code: A Neuroscientific Perspective on Programming
Our everyday life depends on reliable software applications and systems. Programming software is ultimately a human activity, and programmers rely to a large extent on suitable programming languages, tools, and education. The EU-funded project Brains On Code sets out to understand programmers and their professional activities to better support them intheir work. For this purpose, Brains On Code employs neuroscientific methods to uncover the cognitive processes and factors influencing program comprehension. To this end, Brains On Code will provide novel insights for programming education, programming language and tooldesign, and the necessary skills for a career in the software industry and beyond.
Objective
"The pivotal role of software in our modern world mandates strong requirements on quality, correctness, and reliability of software systems. In software development and maintenance, the ability to understand program artifacts plays a key role for programmers to fulfill these requirements. Despite significant progress, research on program comprehension has a fundamental limitation: program comprehension is a cognitive process that cannot be directly observed, which leaves considerable room for misinterpretation, uncertainty, and confounders.
In Brains On Code, we will develop a neuroscientific foundation of program comprehension. Instead of merely observing whether there is a difference regarding program comprehension (e.g. between two programming methods), we aim at precisely and reliably determining the key factors that cause the difference. This is especially challenging as humans are the subjects of study, and inter-personal variance and other confounding factors obfuscate the results. The key idea of Brains On Code is to leverage established methods from cognitive neuroscience to obtain insights into the underlying processes and influential factors of program comprehension. Brains On Code will pursue a multimodal approach that integrates different neuro-physiological measures as well as a cognitive computational modeling approach to establish the theoretical foundation. This way, Brains On Code will lay the foundations of measuring and modeling program comprehension and offer substantial feedback for programming methodology, language design, and education. Addressing longstanding foundational questions such as ""How can we reliably measure program comprehension?"", ""What makes a program hard to understand?"", and ""What skills should programmers have?"" will become into reach. A success of Brains On Code would not only help answer these questions, but also provide an outline for applying the methodology beyond program code (models, specifications, etc.)."
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- natural sciences biological sciences neurobiology
- natural sciences computer and information sciences software
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Keywords
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC)
MAIN PROGRAMME
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Topic(s)
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC Grants
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Call for proposal
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) ERC-2021-ADG
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Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.
66123 Saarbrucken
Germany
The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.