Serge Demeyer | Publications | E-mail Feedback
Last updated on Thursday, November 16, 2023
@inproceedings{DuBoisCSMR2005,
author = {Bart {Du Bois} and Serge Demeyer and Jan Verelst},
booktitle = {Proceedings {CSMR}'05(Conference on Software
Maintenance and Reengineering)},
note = {Acceptance ratio: (33 + 5) / 81 = 46.9\%},
pages = {334-343},
publisher = {{IEEE} Press},
title = {Does the Reengineering Pattern ``{R}efactor to
{U}nderstand'' Improve Program Comprehension?},
year = {2005},
abstract = {Program comprehension is a fundamental requirement
for all but the most trivial maintenance activities.
Previous research has demonstrated key principles for
improving comprehension. Among others, these consist
of the introduction of beacons as indexes into
knowledge, and the chunking of low-level structures
into higher-level abstractions. These principles are
naturally reflected in the reverse engineering
pattern Refactor to Understand, which uses
incremental renaming and extracting of program
elements as the means to decipher cryptic code. In
this paper, we discuss a controlled experiment to
explore differences in program comprehension between
the application of Refactor to Understand and the
traditional Read to Understand pattern. Our results
support added value of Refactor to Understand
regarding specific aspects of program comprehension
and specific types of source code. These findings
illustrate the need for further experiments to
provide clear guidelines on the application of
refactorings for improving program comprehension.},
annote = {internationalconference},
}