miscon:programming.execution.all-statements-active · draft · trust low · v0.1.1 · kind misapplied-analogy

All the statements in a program are active at once

Every line of a program is active at the same time, so a later line can affect what an earlier line did, and a condition anywhere is watched continuously.

Stable URI
https://open-misconceptions.github.io/miscon-data/m/programming.execution.all-statements-active
UUID
a3989f3c-0cf8-4317-874b-f9b8fd9c12e2
Domain
programming.execution
Level band
secondary, undergraduate
Locale
en
About
https://open-misconceptions.github.io/miscon-data/c/programming.execution.sequential-execution (Miscon)

Evidence patterns

Pattern 0: trace a program where a later assignment would matter if it applied retroactively

applies the later value to the earlier output

Itemx = 1 print(x) x = 2
Expected1
Response2

Discriminators

vs a slip. Consistent across items; the learner talks about the program 'as a whole' rather than step by step. A slip is a single wrong step.

vs programming.control.while-checked-continuously. The while case is a special case of this belief; a learner may show it only for loop conditions.

Relations

conflicts_with
Statements run one at a time in order (external)
resolved_by
Statements run one at a time in order (external)

Provenance

Origin: llm-drafted

  1. Pea, R. D. (1986). Language-independent conceptual "bugs" in novice programming. Journal of Educational Computing Research, 2(1), 25-36. doi:10.2190/689T-1R2A-X4W4-29J2
    Parallelism bug.
  2. Sorva, J. (2012). Visual Program Simulation in Introductory Programming Education (Doctoral dissertation, Aalto University). Appendix A catalogues introductory programming misconceptions from the literature. link

Drafted from the cited literature for the Open Misconceptions seed pack; statement, examples and discriminators are original text. Awaiting maintainer review.

Review status

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Cite

miscon:programming.execution.all-statements-active
https://open-misconceptions.github.io/miscon-data/m/programming.execution.all-statements-active