EVIE Empirical Studies ofProgrammers: Second Workshop, Gary M. Olson, Sylvia Sheppard, Elliot Soloway (eds.), Norwood, New Jersey : Ablex Publishing Corporation, 1987 . Rosemary Wright Department of Sociology University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-6299 email: wrightth@ penndrls .bitnet a A positive feature of an interdisciplinary group such as SIGCAS is the temptation of a meddler in a related field to review work not originally intended for his or her commentary . Such is the case with this analysis of Empirical Studies of Programmers : Second Workshop. Title notwithstanding, the book is a collection of primarily cognitive-psychological studies of programmers; these comments reflect the reactions of a programming veteran turned sociologist. The book consists of a two-page preface and sixteen papers presented at an interdisciplinary workshop in 1987 . The purpose of these workshops was laid out for its predecessor in 1986: to study how and why programmers do their tasks, and thereby determine how to assist them in those tasks. [1] There are at least two levels, however, on which these questions are meaningful: the individual and the social . A common observation by programming management is that easily less than half of largeproject programmers' time is spent
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