The sciences of the artificial (3rd ed.)
The sciences of the artificial (3rd ed.)
The Elements of Programming Style
The Elements of Programming Style
A methodology for studying the psychological complexity of computer programs.
A methodology for studying the psychological complexity of computer programs.
The influence of color on program readability and comprehensibility
SIGCSE '86 Proceedings of the seventeenth SIGCSE technical symposium on Computer science education
Schematic pseudocode for program constructs and its computer automation by SCHEMACODE
Communications of the ACM
Typographic style is more than cosmetic
Communications of the ACM
Human factors comparison of a procedural and a nonprocedural query language
ACM Transactions on Database Systems (TODS)
Problems with software complexity measurement
CSC '85 Proceedings of the 1985 ACM thirteenth annual conference on Computer Science
A Review and Evaluation of Software Science
ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR)
Program indentation and comprehensibility
Communications of the ACM
Procedures and comments vs. the banker's algorithm
ACM SIGCSE Bulletin
APL programming: A psychological model
APL '84 Proceedings of the international conference on APL
Analyzer-generated and human-judged predictors of computer program readability
CHI '82 Proceedings of the 1982 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Extending Halstead's software science for a more precise measure of APL
APL '82 Proceedings of the international conference on APL
Methods for improving controlled experimentation in software engineering
ICSE '81 Proceedings of the 5th international conference on Software engineering
Measuring computer program comprehension
SIGCSE '80 Proceedings of the eleventh SIGCSE technical symposium on Computer science education
Software metrics: an introduction and annotated bibliography
ACM SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes
Human performance evaluation in the use of federal computer systems: recommendations
ACM SIGMETRICS Performance Evaluation Review
On the complexity of measuring software complexity
AFIPS '81 Proceedings of the May 4-7, 1981, national computer conference
A measure of logical complexity of programs
Computer Languages
| Hi-index | 0.05 |
A within-subjects experimental design was used to test the effect of two variables on program understanding. The independent variables were complexity of control flow and paragraphing of the source code. Understanding was measured by having the subjects memorize the code for a fixed time and reconstruct the code verbatim. Also some subjects were asked to describe the function of the program after completing their reconstruction. The two groups of subjects for the experiment were students from an introductory programming class and from a graduate class in programming languages. The major findings were that paragraphing of the source had no effect for either group of subjects but that programs with simplified control flow were easier for the computer science students to understand as measured by their ability to reconstruct the programs. The dependent variable, rated accuracy of their description of the programs functions, did not differ as a function of either independent variable. The paper is concluded with a description of the utility of this experimental approach relative to improving the reliability of software and a discussion of the importance of these findings.