Metrics for Student Source Code Analysis

Abstract

Source code quality is undoubtedly very important, yet usually forgotten aspect of software development process. This study shows different approaches to analysis of student codes, mainly in Java. By comparing different widely-used tools and our solution, we are able to get precise results from such an analysis, and thus to improve the code quality. The analysis results can also be used to determine knowledge and skills of novice programmers (students). Analysis of source codes may be as simple as counting the occurrences of language constructs or as complex as design pattern detection. Different approaches and solutions, i.e. measurements of language construct occurrences, copy-pasted code and design pattern detection, or source code quality, are discussed and subjected to evaluation by being executing on source codes of students as novice programmers.