M.-A.D. Storey, K.Wong, and H.A. Mller, "How Do Program Understanding Tools Affect How Programmers Understand Programs?", Science of Computer Programming vol 36, March 2000. pp. 183-207  Home/Search   Document Details and Download   Summary   Related Articles   Check

....expressive or concise as the diagramming scheme of choice in the preexisting software environment. The salient difference between the primary development process and the maintenance of legacy systems is that legacy systems already exist and must be considered when developing any new tools [6,8,14]. The very existence of the legacy system imposes certain constraints on the production of new CASE tools. Another aspect of the problem, for large code base systems, is the inability of most visual layout tools to adequately deal with the scale of the maintenance problem. This paper will discuss ....

M. Storey, K.Wong and H.A. Muller, How do Program Understanding Tools affect How Programmers Understand Programs, WCRE 97

....in the development of the study, nor were they selected based on any other criteria aside from having Java experience. 4.1. 3 Questionnaire Structure and Design The design of the experiment conducted in this study was based on Storey s experimental observations from similar experiments [50, 51]. The questionnaire (Appendix B) contains three sections, each requesting different types of information. The sections are briefly described below; descriptions of each question are found later in this chapter. Section A Pre Use Questions This section was intended to be completed before the ....

Margaret-Anne Storey, Kenny Wong, and Hausi A. Muller. How Do Program Understanding Tools Affect How Programmers Understand Programs? In Working Conference on Reverse Engineering (WCRE-97), pages 12--23. IEEE Computer Society Press, 1997.

....as research in the small [27] User studies are more appropriate for fine grained analyses of software engineering activities or processes. In general, there have been relatively few formal experiments to evaluate reverse engineering tools. However there are a few exceptions, most notably [12, 49, 78, 79]. Field observations Formal user studies in the field can be more difficult to execute than those in a laboratory setting, because they tend to be more expensive and time consuming. However, informal user studies where one or two programmers are observed in their natural setting can be very ....

....were applied to a significant case study where each team had to complete a series of software maintenance and documentation tasks and collaboration between teams was emphasized. Adoption of reverse engineering technology in industry has been very slow [90] However, we observed in our user studies [78, 79] that usability is often a major concern. If the tool is difficult to use, it will affect its adoption rate, no matter how useful it may be. 6 CONCLUSIONS The 1980s produced a solid foundation for our field with the Laws of Software Evolution [46] theories for the fundamental strategies of ....

M.-A. Storey, K. Wong, and H. Muller. How do program understanding tools affect how programmers understand programs. In Proceedings of the 4th Working Conference on Reverse Engineering (WCRE-97), Amsterdam, The Netherlands, pages 12--21, October 1997.

....words, a SDS should allow software writers, i.e. the programmers, to pass the software s underlying logic on to program readers, i.e. the maintainers, so that the latter can use these information to add new functionality to or refine existing ones of the programs. Several research efforts [3] [4] [5] 2] on theorizing the program understanding process have been performed previously. One of the most important conclusions from these studies is that the program understanding process is actually interleaved with two subprocesses: module level comprehension and structural understanding. ....

....mechanics of program understanding from empirical studies. Von Mayrhause, et al. 3] reported on the results of a software understanding field study and found that programmers work predominantly at the code and algorithmic levels, and frequently switch between levels of abstraction. Storey, et al. [4] explores the question of how existing program understanding tools help or hinder real world program understanding tasks. Klosch and Mittermeir [5] found that high level design patterns that software developers use or have to use when developing systems, can serve to support the program ....

Storey, M.-A.D.; Wong, K.; Muller, H.A., "How do program understanding tools affect how programmers understand programs?," Proceedings of the Fourth Working Conference on Reverse Engineering, p. 12-21, Amsterdam, Netherlands, 6-8 Oct. 1997.

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M.-A. D. Storey, K. Wong, and H. A. M uller. How Do Program Understanding Tools Affect How Programmers Understand Programs? In Proceedings of the Seventh Working 10 Conference on Reverse Engineering, pages 12--21, Amsterdam, Holland, Oct. 1997.

....of making unusable tools than usable ones (see Section 7.1.1 for an expanded argument) The confounding misfeatures or omissions might be minor design details that do not fundamentally affect the basic idea of the tool, that is, the reasons why the tool is supportive. For example Storey et al. [622] found that the lack of a simple textual search function was a significant source of frustration to the users of their software visualization tool. Yet the search functionality was essentially parenthetical to their tool s essential design ideas, which concerned the utility of using fisheye views ....

Storey, M.-A. D., Wong, K., and M uller, H. A. How do program understanding tools affect how programmers understand programs? Science of Computer Programming, 36(2), Mar. 2000, pp. 183--207.

....code using a web browser. The tool produces a hypertext version of the source code that includes hypertext links for related source artifacts (for example, each function call has a link to the definition of the function that was called) 1.2. Previous Usability Experiences In past user studies [6, 5], novice users were trained in 20 40 minute sessions to use the Rigi graph editor for viewing and exploring software systems that had previously been imported into the tool and prepared by experienced users. These experiments have shown that novice users can gain a basic understanding of the tool ....

M.-A. Storey, K. Wong, and H. A. Muller. How Do Program Understanding Tools Affect How Programmers Understand Programs? In Proceedings of WCRE'97, pages 12--21, Amsterdam, Holland, Oct. 1997.

....and to identify further requirements. Unfortunately, the evaluations in the literature tend to be ad hoc at best. 15] Software tools are rarely evaluated in a formal way by users, and when they are evaluated, it is for a short time by people who do not have training or experience with the tool. [11, 13, 21, 22] Too often potential users base their opinions of the tool on superficial factors such as appearance, ease of learning, and number of features, rather than factors that are more important in the long run such as ease of use, flexibility, and scalability. Evaluations based on case studies, such as ....

M.-A. Storey, K. Wong, and H. A. Muller, "How do Program Understanding Tools Affect How Programmers Understand Programs?," presented at WCRE '97, Amsterdam, Holland, 1997.

.... programmers use a hybrid approach and frequently switch between various comprehension strategies [30] The diversity of these cognitive models is not surprising, when one considers the varied characteristics of maintainers, programs to be understood, and the goals driving the comprehension tasks [26]. Nevertheless, all the cognitive models agree that understanding is achieved by exploring program information, such as code or documentation, and assimilating that information into existing knowledge about the program. For many programmers, the source code of the software system is the most ....

....students in computer science at the University of Victoria) were observed while solving some realistic software maintenance tasks. The studied tools were Rigi, SHriMP, and SNiFF (an integrated development environment from TakeFive Software) This experiment is described in more detail in [26]. Each of the 30 subjects (of a particular level of computing experience) was randomly assigned to only one interface, allowing time for adequate training and practice tasks before the formal tasks. Test programs of increasing complexity were used for the three sets of tasks, culminating with a ....

M.-A. Storey, K. Wong, and H. Muller. How do program understanding tools affect how programmers understand programs. To appear in the Proceedings of the 4th Working Conferenceon ReverseEngineering(WCRE97), Amsterdam, Holland, 1997.

....systems. We are currently applying the framework of cognitive design elements to the design and evaluation of a tool for software exploration called SHriMP (Simple Hierarchical Multi Perspective) views [10] We have performed two user studies to evaluate the effectiveness of the SHriMP interface [11, 12]. Results from these studies are being used to improve the cognitive framework for design. The improved framework will, in turn, be employed in the subsequent redesigns of the SHriMP tool (see Fig. 1) 2 The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. Section 2 describes several cognitive ....

....has been implemented using Pad [69] a graphics extension for Tcl Tk. Pad is highly optimized for efficiently displaying large numbers of objects and smoothly animating the motions of panning and zooming. We have performed two user studies to evaluate the effectiveness of the SHriMP interface [11, 12]. In the second experiment, 30 subjects (graduate and undergraduate computer science students) were observed while solving some realistic software maintenance tasks. In this study, SHriMP was compared to two other tools, Rigi and SNiFF 1 . We hypothesized that a given interface would affect the ....

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M.-A.D. Storey, K. Wong, and H.A. Muller. How do program understanding tools affect how programmers understand programs? In Proceedings of the 4th Working Conference on Reverse Engineering (WCRE'97), Amsterdam, The Netherlands, pages 12--23, October, 1997.

....algorithm are implemented in Tcl Tk using the Pad widgets. Since Pad supports HTML items in its canvas, we used this feature to display HTML ized source code inside the nodes, as opposed to displaying ordinary text. This latest version is currently being evaluated through user testing [36]. 8 Conclusions This paper describes the SHriMP layout adjustment algorithm. This algorithm is suitable for uniformly resizing nodes when requests for more screen space are made. It preserves straightness of lines and the graph topology of nodes in adjusted views. Moreover, the SHriMP algorithm ....

....is little empirical evidence that clearly indicates their value. There has been a lack of evaluation in this area (notable exceptions are [7, 9, 13, 16, 31, 42] We have compared SHriMP views to other visualization methods, such as a multiple window approach and pan zoom, in two user studies [34, 36]. Initial observations indicate that fisheye views may be useful in certain scenarios, but further studies are needed to evaluate the benefits of the various layout strategies and to determine if fisheye views are a useful medium for visualizing large software programs. Acknowledgements This ....

M.-A. Storey, K. Wong, and H. M uller, How do program understanding tools affect how programmers understand programs, in Proceedings of the 4th Working Conference on Reverse Engineering (WCRE97), Amsterdam, Holland, October 1997, pp. 12--21.

.... use a hybrid approach and frequently switch between various comprehension strategies [31] The diversity of these cognitive models is is not surprising, when one considers the varied characteristics of maintainers, programs to be understood, and the goals driving the comprehension tasks [28]. Nevertheless, all the cognitive models agree that understanding is achieved by exploring program information, such as code or documentation, and assimilating that information into existing knowledge about the program. For many programmers, the source code of the software system is the most ....

....students in computer science at the University of Victoria) were observed while solving more realistic software maintenance tasks. The studied tools were Rigi, SHriMP, and SNiFF (an integrated development environment from TakeFive Software) This experiment is described in more detail in [28]. Each of the 30 subjects (of a particular level of computing experience) was randomly assigned to only one interface, allowing time for adequate training and practice tasks before the formal tasks. Test programs of increasing complexity were used for the three sets of tasks, culminating with a ....

M.-A.D. Storey, K. Wong, and H.A. Muller. How do program understanding tools affect how programmers understand programs. To appear in the Proceedings of the 4th Working Conferenceon ReverseEngineering(WCRE97), Amsterdam, Holland, 1997.

.... the framework of cognitive design elements to the design and evaluation of a tool for software exploration called SHriMP (Simple Hierarchical MultiPerspective) views [153] We performed two user studies to evaluate the effectiveness of the SHriMP interface and to compare it with other tools [156, 159]. Results from these studies are used to improve the cognitive framework for design. The improved framework is then used for improving SHriMP and other software exploration tools. 1.3 Outline of the Thesis The thesis is organized as follows. Several cognitive theories of program comprehension are ....

....and has been implemented in the SHriMP tool for visualizing software structures. In addition, it has been implemented in a tool for visualizing medical images at Simon Fraser University [170, 171] 11.1. 5 User studies SHriMP has been evaluated and compared to other tools in two user studies [156, 159]. In the first study, 12 subjects (graduate and undergraduate computer science students) performed simple program exploration tasks using SHriMP, Rigi and a command line interface (cf. CHAPTER 11. CONCLUSIONS 154 Chapter 8) In the second experiment, 30 subjects (graduate and undergraduate ....

M.-A.D. Storey, K. Wong, and H.A. Muller. How do program understanding tools affect how programmers understand programs. In Proceedings of the 4th Working Conference on Reverse Engineering (WCRE'97), Amsterdam, Holland, pages 12--21, October 1997.

....of programmers. The methodology emerged with a cognitive framework for design developed from a comparative analysis of existing tools and the literature [151] The framework has been applied to the design of a software exploration tool prototype (SHriMP) 157] and was followed by two user studies [156, 158]. The lessons learned from these user studies were applied in an iterative manner to enhance the usability and effectiveness of the SHriMP tool. CHAPTER 11. CONCLUSIONS 151 11.1 Summary of Contributions The main contributions from this thesis are as follows: ffl an iterative approach for ....

M.-A.D. Storey, K. Wong, and H.A. Muller. How do program understanding tools affect how programmers understand programs. Submitted to the Science of Computer Programming (invited submission), 1998.

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M.-A.D. Storey, K.Wong, and H.A. Mller, "How Do Program Understanding Tools Affect How Programmers Understand Programs?", Science of Computer Programming vol 36, March 2000. pp. 183-207

No context found.

Margaret-Anne Storey and Kenny Wong. How Do Program Understanding Tools Affect How Programmers Understand Programs? In Proc. of WCRE-97. Amsterdam, Holland, pages 12-21, October 6-8, 1997.

No context found.

M.-A. D. Storey, K. Wong, and H. A. M uller. How do program understanding tools affect how programmers understand programs? In I. Baxter, A. Quilici, and C. Verhoef, editors, Proceedings Fourth Working Conference on Reverse Engineering, pages 12--21. IEEE Computer Society, 1997.

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M.-A. D. Storey, K. Wong, and H. A. M uller. How Do Program Understanding Tools Affect How Programmers Understand Programs? In I. Baxter, A. Quilici, and C. Verhoef, editors, Proceedings Fourth Working Conference on Reverse Engineering, pages 12--21. IEEE Computer Society, 1997. (p 4)

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