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Despite all of the activities that we've talked about so far—communicating, coordinating, planning, designing, architecting—really, most of a software engineers time is spent reading code (Maalej et al. 2014). Sometimes this is their own code, which makes this reading easier. Most of the time, it is someone else's code, whether it's a teammate's, or part of a library or API you're using. We call this reading program comprehension.
-Being good at program comprehension is a critical skill. You need to be able to read a function and know what it will do with its inputs; you need to be able to read a class and understand its state and functionality; you also need to be able to comprehend a whole implementation, understanding its architecture. Without these skills, you can't test well, you can't debug well, and you can fix or enhance the systems you're building or maintaining. In fact, studies of software engineers' first year at their first job show that a significant majority of their time is spent trying to simply comprehend the architecture of the system they are building or maintaining and understanding the processes that are being followed to modify and enhance them (Dagenais et al. 2010).
+Being good at program comprehension is a critical skill. You need to be able to read a function and know what it will do with its inputs; you need to be able to read a class and understand its state and functionality; you also need to be able to comprehend a whole implementation, understanding its architecture. Without these skills, you can't test well, you can't debug well, and you can't fix or enhance the systems you're building or maintaining. In fact, studies of software engineers' first year at their first job show that a significant majority of their time is spent trying to simply comprehend the architecture of the system they are building or maintaining and understanding the processes that are being followed to modify and enhance them (Dagenais et al. 2010).
What's going on when developers comprehend code? Usually, developers are trying to answer questions about code that help them build larger models of how a program works. Because program comprehension is hard, they avoid it when they can, relying on explanations from other developers rather than trying to build precise models of how a program works on their own (Roehm et al. 2012). When they do try to comprehend code, developers are usually trying to answer questions. Several studies have many general questions that developers must be able to answer in order to understand programs (Sillito et al. 2006, LaToza & Myers 2010). Here are over forty common questions that developers ask:
diff --git a/index.html b/index.html index 955df5b..584af20 100644 --- a/index.html +++ b/index.html @@ -80,7 +80,11 @@ - This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 0952733. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. +This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 0952733. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. +
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License