Related papers: Do Comments follow Commenting Conventions? A Case …
Previous studies have shown that high-quality code comments assist developers in program comprehension and maintenance tasks. However, the semi-structured nature of comments, unclear conventions for writing good comments, and the lack of…
Code comments are important for program comprehension, development, and maintenance tasks. Given the varying standards for code comments, and their unstructured or semi-structured nature, developers get easily confused (especially novice…
Motivation: Code understandability is crucial in software development, as developers spend 58% to 70% of their time reading source code. Improving it can improve productivity and reduce maintenance costs. Problem: Experimental studies often…
A central function of code review is to increase understanding; helping reviewers understand a code change aids in knowledge transfer and finding bugs. Comments in code largely serve a similar purpose, helping future readers understand the…
Most software maintenance and evolution tasks require developers to understand the source code of their software systems. Software developers usually inspect class comments to gain knowledge about program behavior, regardless of the…
Code comments are important artifacts in software systems and play a paramount role in many software engineering (SE) tasks related to maintenance and program comprehension. However, while it is widely accepted that high quality matters in…
As an integral part of source code files, code comments help improve program readability and comprehension. However, developers sometimes do not comment on their program code adequately due to the incurred extra efforts, lack of relevant…
Previous studies have characterized code comments in various programming languages to support better program comprehension activities and maintenance tasks. However, very few studies have focused on understanding developer practices to…
We are trying to find source code comments that help programmers understand a nontrivial part of source code. One of such examples would be explaining to assign a zero as a way to "clear" a buffer. Such comments are invaluable to…
Natural language comments convey key aspects of source code such as implementation, usage, and pre- and post-conditions. Failure to update comments accordingly when the corresponding code is modified introduces inconsistencies, which is…
Open-source code development has become widespread in recent years. As a result, open-source software platforms have also become popular, and millions of developers from diverse locations are able to contribute to the same projects. On…
Software development is a collaborative process that involves various interactions among individuals and teams. TODO comments in source code play a critical role in managing and coordinating diverse tasks during this process. However, this…
Software comments are critical for human understanding of software, and as such many comment generation techniques have been proposed. However, we find that a systematic evaluation of the factual accuracy of generated comments is rare; only…
Following code style conventions in software projects is essential for maintaining overall code quality. Adhering to these conventions improves maintainability, understandability, and extensibility. Additionally, following best practices…
Code smells are symptoms of poor design quality. Since code review is a process that also aims at improving code quality, we investigate whether and how code review influences the severity of code smells. In this study, we analyze more than…
Code review is widely known as one of the best practices for software quality assurance in software development. In a typical code review process, reviewers check the code committed by developers to ensure the quality of the code, during…
The context of this work is specification, detection and ultimately removal of detectable harmful patterns in source code that are associated with defects in design and implementation of software. In particular, we investigate five code…
Programming education should aim to provide students with a broad range of skills that they will later use while developing software. An important aspect in this is their ability to write code that is not only correct but also of high…
In software development and maintenance, code comments can help developers understand source code, and improve communication among developers. However, developers sometimes neglect to update the corresponding comment when changing the code,…
Code review is a mature practice for software quality assurance in software development with which reviewers check the code that has been committed by developers, and verify the quality of code. During the code review discussions, reviewers…