An empirical study of the effect of semantic differences on programmer comprehension

Abstract

Software engineers face a wide range of difficult tasks. Understanding semantic relationships, such as the semantic differences between two programs, should aid a software engineer address many of these tasks. A series of experiments was conducted with an implementation of a semantic differencing algorithm for the C language. Sixty-three subjects participated in two controlled experiments. There is evidence that the experimental group, which had access to semantic differences, performed significantly faster (p=0.023) and more accurately (p=0.047) than the control group. The study provides empirical support to the assertion that semantic information assists program comprehension.