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- Title
An Empirical Investigation of the Influence of a Type of Side Effects on Program Comprehension.
- Authors
Dolado, J.J.; Harman, M.; Otero, M.C.; Hu, L.
- Abstract
This paper reports the results of a study on the impact of a type of side effect (SE) upon program comprehension. We applied a crossover design on different tests involving fragments of C code that include increment and decrement operators. Each test had an SE version and a side-effect-free (SEF) counterpart. The variables measured in the treatments were the number of correct answers and the time spent in answering. The results show that the side-effect operators considered significantly reduce performance in comprehension-related tasks, providing empirical justification for the belief that side effects are harmful.
- Subjects
COMPUTER software development; SOFTWARE engineering
- Publication
IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, 2003, Vol 29, Issue 7, p665
- ISSN
0098-5589
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1109/TSE.2003.1214329