Studying abbreviated vs. full-word identifier names when dealing with faults: an external replication

Abstract

Context: abbreviated and full-word identifier names in dealing with faults in source code. Goal: investigating whether the use of abbreviated identifier names affects the ability of novice professional software developers in identifying and fixing faults in Java code. Method: external replication. Results: the results of the original experiment (conducted on C code) were confirmed. Conclusions: the difference in using abbreviated and full-word identifiers is not statistically significant with respect to the time to complete a task and the number of faults identified and fixed.