Theories, tools and research methods in program comprehension: past, present and future

Program comprehension research can be characterized by both the theories that provide rich explanations about how programmers understand software, as well as the tools that are used to assist in comprehension tasks. In this paper, I review some of the key cognitive theories of program comprehension that have emerged over the past thirty years. Using these theories as a canvas, I then explore how tools that are commonly used today have evolved to support program comprehension. Specifically, I discuss how the theories and tools are related and reflect on the research methods that were used to construct the theories and evaluate the tools. The reviewed theories and tools are distinguished according to human characteristics, program characteristics, and the context for the various comprehension tasks. Finally, I predict how these characteristics will change in the future and speculate on how a number of important research directions could lead to improvements in program comprehension tool development and research methods. Dr. Margaret-Anne Storey is an associate professor of computer science at the University of Victoria, a Visiting Scientist at the IBM Centre for Advanced Studies in Toronto and a Canada Research Chair in Human Computer Interaction for Software Engineering. Her research passion is to understand how technology can help people explore, understand and share complex information and knowledge. She applies and evaluates techniques from knowledge engineering and visual interface design to applications such as reverse engineering of legacy software, medical ontology development, digital image management and learning in web-based environments. She is also an educator and enjoys the challenges of teaching programming to novice programmers.