How Do Software Engineers Understand Code Changes?

Some researchers from MSR have published a paper on how do software engineers understand code changes. To me there are no surprises, especially since I participated in the survey the paper is based on (I think I'm quoted too actually). The bottom line is that developers spend a lot of time trying to understand previous code changes and that good check-in descriptions help in the effort to understand old changes.

Comments

• Anonymous
  October 11, 2012
  It is really a good paper thanks for sharing. www.tnvbalaji.com