An experimental comparison of the effectiveness and usefulness of inspection techniques for object-oriented programs
Mats Skoglund · 2004
It has been argued that object-oriented programs are harder to comprehend, and thus inspect, than imperative programs due to the large number of dependencies that exist in object-oriented programs. This paper presents the results of two experiments where systematic inspection, an inspection technique especially developed for object-oriented programs, was compared to checklist based reading technique. We evaluated the techniques in terms of effectiveness and also in terms of the support they offer in understanding the code and the understandability and usefulness of the techniques. The first experiment was conducted with 133 second year computer science students as subjects and the second with 24 third, and fourth, year students. The analysis did not show any great differences between the two techniques either in effectiveness, understandability or usefulness. However we found that systematic inspection gives more support in understanding the code than the checklist based reading.