Developers talking about code quality

Developers talking about code quality

There are many aspects of code quality, some of which are difficult to capture or to measure. Despite the importance of software quality, there is a lack of commonly accepted measures or indicators for code quality that can be linked to quality attributes. We investigate software developers’ percept...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Empirical software engineering : an international journal Vol. 28; no. 6; p. 128
Main Authors: Börstler, Jürgen, Bennin, Kwabena E., Hooshangi, Sara, Jeuring, Johan, Keuning, Hieke, Kleiner, Carsten, MacKellar, Bonnie, Duran, Rodrigo, Störrle, Harald, Toll, Daniel, van Assema, Jelle
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: New York Springer US 01-11-2023
Springer Nature B.V
Subjects:
Code quality
Compilers
Computer Science
Datavetenskap
Documentation
Interpreters
Programming Languages
Programvaruteknik
Quality management
Quality perception
Readability
Semi-structured interviews
Software development
Software Engineering
Software Engineering/Programming and Operating Systems
Software quality
Software Technology
Source code
Source code properties
Quality perception
Code quality
Software development
Source code properties
Semi-structured interviews
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Description
Summary:There are many aspects of code quality, some of which are difficult to capture or to measure. Despite the importance of software quality, there is a lack of commonly accepted measures or indicators for code quality that can be linked to quality attributes. We investigate software developers’ perceptions of source code quality and the practices they recommend to achieve these qualities. We analyze data from semi-structured interviews with 34 professional software developers, programming teachers and students from Europe and the U.S. For the interviews, participants were asked to bring code examples to exemplify what they consider good and bad code, respectively. Readability and structure were used most commonly as defining properties for quality code. Together with documentation, they were also suggested as the most common target properties for quality improvement. When discussing actual code, developers focused on structure, comprehensibility and readability as quality properties. When analyzing relationships between properties, the most commonly talked about target property was comprehensibility. Documentation, structure and readability were named most frequently as source properties to achieve good comprehensibility. Some of the most important source code properties contributing to code quality as perceived by developers lack clear definitions and are difficult to capture. More research is therefore necessary to measure the structure, comprehensibility and readability of code in ways that matter for developers and to relate these measures of code structure, comprehensibility and readability to common software quality attributes.
ISSN:1382-3256
1573-7616
1573-7616
DOI:10.1007/s10664-023-10381-0