research-article

An exploratory study of program comprehension strategies of procedural and object-oriented programmers

Authors:

CYNTHIA L. CORRITORE,

SUSAN WIEDENBECKAuthors Info & Claims

International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, Volume 54, Issue 1

Pages 1 - 23

https://doi.org/10.1006/ijhc.2000.0423

Published: 01 January 2001 Publication History

Abstract

This exploratory study examines the nature of program understanding strategies employed during a series of comprehension and maintenance activities carried out over time. Two dimensions of comprehension were examined: the direction of comprehension and the breadth of comprehension. Thirty expert procedural and object-oriented (OO) programmers studied a program and then performed modifications during two sessions held 1 week apart. The results showed that the direction of comprehension was mixed. The OO programmers tended to use a strongly top-down approach to program understanding during the early phase of familiarization with the program but used an increasingly bottom-up approach during the subsequent maintenance tasks. The procedural programmers used a more bottom-up orientation even during the early phase, and this bottom-up approach became even stronger during the maintenance tasks. The breadth of the programmers' comprehension was found to be greater for the procedural programmers than for the object-oriented programmers. However, after carrying out a series of tasks, all programmers had examined the majority of the program code. The results suggest that, regardless of paradigm, expert programmers eventually build a broad systematic, rather than a localized, view of a program over time.

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Cited By

Allen JKelleher CGraziotin DNolte A(2024)An Exploratory Study of Programmers' Analogical Reasoning and Software History Usage During Code Re-PurposingProceedings of the 2024 IEEE/ACM 17th International Conference on Cooperative and Human Aspects of Software Engineering10.1145/3641822.3641864(109-120)Online publication date: 14-Apr-2024
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Pan WKessentini MMing HYang Z(2023)EASE: An Effort-aware Extension of Unsupervised Key Class Identification ApproachesACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology10.1145/363571433:4(1-43)Online publication date: 2-Dec-2023
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Index Terms

An exploratory study of program comprehension strategies of procedural and object-oriented programmers
1. Social and professional topics
  1. Professional topics
    1. Management of computing and information systems
      1. Software management
        Software maintenance
2. Software and its engineering
  1. Software creation and management

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Published In

cover image International Journal of Human-Computer Studies

International Journal of Human-Computer Studies Volume 54, Issue 1

Jan. 2001

180 pages

ISSN:1071-5819

Editor:
B. R. Gaines
Centre for Person-Computer Studies, Cobble Hill, Canada

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Copyright © Academic Press.

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Academic Press, Inc.

United States

Publication History

Published: 01 January 2001

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Cited By

Allen JKelleher CGraziotin DNolte A(2024)An Exploratory Study of Programmers' Analogical Reasoning and Software History Usage During Code Re-PurposingProceedings of the 2024 IEEE/ACM 17th International Conference on Cooperative and Human Aspects of Software Engineering10.1145/3641822.3641864(109-120)Online publication date: 14-Apr-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3641822.3641864
Pan WKessentini MMing HYang Z(2023)EASE: An Effort-aware Extension of Unsupervised Key Class Identification ApproachesACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology10.1145/363571433:4(1-43)Online publication date: 2-Dec-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3635714
Pan WMing HKim DYang Z(2023)Pride: Prioritizing Documentation Effort Based on a PageRank-Like Algorithm and Simple Filtering RulesIEEE Transactions on Software Engineering10.1109/TSE.2022.317146949:3(1118-1151)Online publication date: 1-Mar-2023
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Sanchez HWhitehead JBertolino ACanfora GElbaum S(2015)Source code curation on StackOverflowProceedings of the 37th International Conference on Software Engineering - Volume 210.5555/2819009.2819131(661-664)Online publication date: 16-May-2015
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Ko ALee MFerrari VIp STran CCataldo Mde Souza CDittrich YHoda RSharp H(2011)A case study of post-deployment user feedback triageProceedings of the 4th International Workshop on Cooperative and Human Aspects of Software Engineering10.1145/1984642.1984644(1-8)Online publication date: 21-May-2011
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