A Replicated Study on Factors Affecting Software Understandability

Georgia Kapitsaki, Luigi Lavazza, Sandro Morasca, Gabriele Rotoloni

2025

Abstract

Background. Understandability is an important characteristic of software code that can largely impact the effectiveness and cost of software maintenance. Aim. We investigate if and to what extent the characteristics of source code captured by static metrics affect understandability. Method. We replicated an empirical study which provided some insights and highlighted some code characteristics that seem to affect understandability. The replication took place in a different country and was conducted with a different set of developers, i.e., Bachelor’s students, instead of Master’s students. The same source code was used in both studies. Results. The data collected in the replication do not corroborate the results of the initial study, since no correlation between code measures and code understanding could be found. The reason seems to be that the initial study involved developers with very similar skills and experience, while the replication involved developers with quite different skills. Conclusions. Code understanding appears to be affected much more by developers’ skills than by code characteristics. The extent to which code understanding depends on code characteristics is observable only for a homogeneous population of developers. Our results can be useful for software practitioners and for future software understandability studies.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Kapitsaki G., Lavazza L., Morasca S. and Rotoloni G. (2025). A Replicated Study on Factors Affecting Software Understandability. In Proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Evaluation of Novel Approaches to Software Engineering - Volume 1: ENASE; ISBN 978-989-758-742-9, SciTePress, pages 582-591. DOI: 10.5220/0013339500003928

in Bibtex Style

@conference{enase25,
author={Georgia Kapitsaki and Luigi Lavazza and Sandro Morasca and Gabriele Rotoloni},
title={A Replicated Study on Factors Affecting Software Understandability},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Evaluation of Novel Approaches to Software Engineering - Volume 1: ENASE},
year={2025},
pages={582-591},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0013339500003928},
isbn={978-989-758-742-9},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF

JO - Proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Evaluation of Novel Approaches to Software Engineering - Volume 1: ENASE
TI - A Replicated Study on Factors Affecting Software Understandability
SN - 978-989-758-742-9
AU - Kapitsaki G.
AU - Lavazza L.
AU - Morasca S.
AU - Rotoloni G.
PY - 2025
SP - 582
EP - 591
DO - 10.5220/0013339500003928
PB - SciTePress