Syntactic Errors in Computer Programming

A study of users of a large-scale computer system (TSS/360) revealed that only 12 to 17% of the FORTRAN, PL/I, and Assembler Language computer programs submitted to the language processors contained syntactic errors. Thus, syntactic errors do not appear to be a significant bottleneck in programming. This experiment is part of a larger effort to identify and reduce the behavioral bottlenecks in computer programming. © 1974, Human Factors and Ergonomics Society. All rights reserved.