Computer programming as a second language

Abstract

Programming languages are indisputably different from natural languages. Natural languages are communicative in both oral and visual modalities and have thousands of unique lexical items, whereas programming languages may rely on only a few hundred lexical items and are solely practiced in the visual modality. Nonetheless, the two share similar properties like lexical items, syntactic structures, rules of discourse, productivity, and recursion. Previous research on the topic of second language acquisition (SLA) principles applied to programming language learning (PLL) is limited, but finds common ground. One promising crossover area is transfer, a strand of research in SLA on the influence of previously learned language(s) in the learning of an additional language. This review of the literature will focus on parallels between these research areas and discuss potential avenues for future research in PLL, including cross-training: leveraging the experience of learning one programming language for learning an additional programming language.