An Investigation of Problem-Solving Habits of Computer Programmers: A Case Study in Iranian Companies

Programmers differ in how they generate source codes. The study of these differences, programming habits, helps us to select and train programmers. This has been studied before and specially among student programmers. To the extent we know, such a study has not been carried out in Iran. To fill this gap and gather local knowledge, in the present research, we distributed an individual difference questionnaire among 52 programmers in various Iranian software companies. Using the collected data, we studied the influence of age, gender, experience and personality on four problem solving strategies: top-down, bottom-up, breadth-first, and depth-first. We analyzed the data statistically and found that Iranian programmers have a preference towards specific programming strategies as mentioned before in other studies. Besides, age, gender, experience, and personality traits affect their preferences.