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<p>We are researchers interested in empirical software engineering from Heidelberg, Magdeburg, Passau, Raleigh, Redmond, and Weimar. We conduct behavioral studies and also basic research on program comprehension, including fMRI studies.</p>
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<p>We are researchers interested in empirical software engineering from Chemnitz, Magdeburg, Saarbrücken, Raleigh, and Redmond. We conduct behavioral studies and also basic research on program comprehension, including eye-tracking and fMRI studies.</p>
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@@ -128,11 +128,15 @@ <h3>What Drives the Reading Order of Programmers? An Eye Tracking Study (ICPC 20
We replicated two previous eye-tracking studies to investigate the effect that source code linearity, programmer experience, and comprehension strategy have on reading order of source code. Our results indicate the linearity of source code is a major driving factor that determines programmers' reading order, while experience and comprehension strategy seem to play more minor roles.
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<b>Background:</b> The way how programmers comprehend source code depends on several factors, including the source code itself and the programmer. Recent studies showed that novice programmers tend to read source code more like natural language text, whereas experts tend to follow the program execution flow. But, it is unknown how the <i>linearity of source code</i> and the comprehension strategy influence programmers' <i>linearity of reading order</i>.
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<b>Objective:</b> We replicate two previous studies with the aim of additionally providing empirical evidence on the influencing effects of linearity of source code and programmers' comprehension strategy on linearity of reading order.
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<b>Methods:</b> To understand the effects of linearity of source code on reading order, we conducted a non-exact replication of studies by Busjahn et al. and Peachock et al., which compared the reading order of novice and expert programmers. Like the original studies, we used an eye-tracker to record the eye movements of participants (12 novice and 19 intermediate programmers).
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<b>Results:</b> In line with Busjahn et al. (but different from Peachock et al.), we found that experience modulates the reading behavior of participants. However, the linearity of source code has an even stronger effect on reading order than experience, whereas the comprehension strategy has a minor effect.
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<b>Implications:</b> Our results demonstrate that studies on the reading behavior of programmers must carefully select source code snippets to control the influence of confounding factors. Furthermore, we identify a need for further studies on how programmers should structure source code to align it with their natural reading behavior to ease program comprehension.
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<h4>Resources</h4>
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@@ -147,10 +151,10 @@ <h3>Indentation: Simply a Matter of Style or Support for Program Comprehension?
An early study showed that indentation is not a matter of style, but provides actual support for program comprehension. In this paper, we present a non-exact replication of this study. Our aim is to provide empirical evidence for the suggested level of indentation made by many style guides. Following Miara and others, we also included the perceived difficulty, and we extended the original design to gain additional insights into the influence of indentation on visual effort by employing an eye-tracker. In the course of our study, we asked 22~participants to calculate the output of Java code snippets with different levels of indentation, while we recorded their gaze behavior. We could not find any indication that the indentation levels affect program comprehension or visual effort, so we could not replicate the findings of Miara and others. Nevertheless, our modernization of the original experiment design are a promising starting point for future studies in this field.
@@ -168,10 +172,10 @@ <h3>CodersMUSE: Multi-Modal Data Exploration of Program-Comprehension Experiment
Program comprehension is a central cognitive process in programming and has been in the focus of researchers for decades, but is still not thoroughly unraveled. Multi-modal measurement methods are a way to gain a more holistic understanding of program comprehension. However, there is no proper tool support that lets researchers explore synchronized, conjoint multi-modal data, specifically designed for the needs in software engineering. In this paper, we present CodersMUSE, a prototype implementation that aims to satisfy this crucial need.
@@ -189,8 +193,8 @@ <h3>A Look into Programmers’ Heads (TSE)</h3>
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