An Investigation of Procedure and Variable Names as Beacons During Program Comprehension
Edward M. Gellenbeck, Curtis R. Cook · 1991
Beacons are defined as sets of key features that typically indicate the presence of a particular data structure or operation. It has been claimed that programmers use them to help comprehend an unfamiliar program. However, despite their importance, beacons are not well-defined and very few have been identified. The present study investigated the importance of procedure and variable names as beacons during comprehension of short Pascal procedures. Ninety-six college seniors and graduate computer science students studied versions of a binary search and sorting procedures for one minute each and then provided a written description of the functions of each procedure. It was found that both meaningful procedure and variable names served as beacons to high-level comprehension. However, a strong code beacon, like the swap operation in a sorting routine, was found to be relied on more than the procedure name for high-level comprehension.