The use of code reading in teaching programming

Programming is an intertwined process of reading and writing. So far, computing education research has often focused on the writing part. This paper takes a further look into the role of reading source code in learning to program. In order to complement the findings from literature, we conducted interviews with programming instructors using the miracle question, on the role of code reading and comprehension. The analysis of these interviews describes this role in terms of the five categories conceptualization, occurrences, and effects of successful code reading, challenges for learners, as well as approaches to facilitate code reading. As a result, we suggest to take a further look into the different reading processes involved in programming, in order to add to the knowledge about programming instruction.