Knowledge and Reasoning about Code in a Large Code Base
David Martin, John Rooksby · Lancaster EPrints (Lancaster University) · 2006
In this paper we discuss how programmers maintain and develop code as part of a large code base. We discuss instances of how programmers reason about interdependencies in code, how programmers decide the location of the particular code to be changed in improving software functionality, and how programmers reason about what code can form the basis for a new piece of code. All three examples are of occasions where programmers, for one reason or another, have discussed with other programmers the issues to do with their code. Such talk makes reasoning, which might otherwise be done privately ‘in the programmers head’, observable. Through our analysis of the examples of observed reasoning we wish to draw attention to how knowledge is produced, exhibited, demonstrated and deployed in maintaining and developing the code base.