Do I Know What My Code is "Saying"?: A study on novice programmers' perceptions of what reused source code may mean

Abstract

Software development practices rely extensively on reusing source code written by other programmers. One of the recurring questions about such practice is how much programmers, acting as users of somebody else's code, really understand about the source code that they inject it in their own programs. The question is even more important for novices, who are trying to learn what programming is and how it should be practiced in larger scale. In this paper we present the results of an ongoing research using a semiotic approach to investigate how programmers send and receive, through messages inscribed in the source code of the programs they write or reuse, implicit and explicit communication about what such source code "means" to them and others. We carried out two studies with novice programmers and results suggest that source code reuse may impact the comprehension that programmers have about their own source code. In addition, how it impacts their understanding about the messages that are being communicated through their programs.