Comprehending Studies on Program Comprehension

Abstract

Program comprehension is an important aspect of developing and maintaining software, as programmers spend most of their time comprehending source code. Thus, it is the focus of many studies and experiments to evaluate approaches and techniques that aim to improve program comprehension. As the amount of corresponding work increases, the question arises how researchers address program comprehension. To answer this question, we conducted a literature review of papers published at the International Conference on Program Comprehension, the major venue for research on program comprehension. In this article, we i) present preliminary results of the literature review and ii) derive further research directions. The results indicate the necessity for a more detailed analysis of program comprehension and empirical research.