Direction and scope of comprehension-related activities by procedural and object-oriented programmers: an empirical study

Examines the direction and scope of comprehension-related activities of professional programmers carrying out several program comprehension and maintenance activities over time. Procedural and object-oriented (OO) programmers studied a program and subsequently performed modifications during two sessions. The results showed that the OO programmers tended to use a strongly top-down approach to program understanding during the early phase of studying the program, but increasingly used a bottom-up approach during the maintenance tasks. The procedural programmers used a more bottom-up orientation throughout all activities. The scope of the activities was greater for the procedural than for the OO programmers. However, regardless of the programming paradigm used, the programmers over time built a broad, rather than a localized, view of the program.