CoderAgent: Simulating Student Behavior for Personalized Programming Learning with Large Language Models

Personalized programming tutoring, such as exercise recommendation, can enhance learners' efficiency, motivation, and outcomes, which is increasingly important in modern digital education. However, the lack of sufficient and high-quality programming data, combined with the mismatch between offline evaluation and real-world learning, hinders the practical deployment of such systems. To address this challenge, many approaches attempt to simulate learner practice data, yet they often overlook the fine-grained, iterative nature of programming learning, resulting in a lack of interpretability and granularity. To fill this gap, we propose a LLM-based agent, CoderAgent, to simulate students' programming processes in a fine-grained manner without relying on real data. Specifically, we equip each human learner with an intelligent agent, the core of which lies in capturing the cognitive states of the human programming practice process. Inspired by ACT-R, a cognitive architecture framework, we design the structure of CoderAgent to align with human cognitive architecture by focusing on the mastery of programming knowledge and the application of coding ability. Recognizing the inherent patterns in multi-layered cognitive reasoning, we introduce the Programming Tree of Thought (PTOT), which breaks down the process into four steps: why, how, where, and what. This approach enables a detailed analysis of iterative problem-solving strategies. Finally, experimental evaluations on real-world datasets demonstrate that CoderAgent provides interpretable insights into learning trajectories and achieves accurate simulations, paving the way for personalized programming education.