Scalable interfaces to support program comprehension
Wayne V. Citrin, C. Santiago, B. Zorn · 2002
Studies of how programmers understand code suggest that programmers approach the understanding task in both bottom-up and top-town ways, depending on the context. We present a tool, VIPR, that provides a unified visual representation of both high-level and low-level constructs and a smooth transition between the two levels through smoothly animated zooming and focus and context ('fisheyeing') techniques. VlPR is currently being used to visualize Tcl programs, but the technique is generally applicable to programs written in any imperative programming language.