The role of concepts in program comprehension

Abstract

The paper presents an overview of the role of concepts in program comprehension. It discusses concept location, in which the implementation of a specific concept is located in the code. This process is very common and precedes a large proportion of code changes. The paper also discusses the process of learning about the domain from the code, which is a prerequisite of code reengineering. The paper notes the similarities and overlaps between program comprehension and human learning.