The document discusses program comprehension and code cognition. It defines program comprehension as the process of gaining or regaining knowledge about a computer program. It lists five common maintenance tasks that require an understanding of the code: adaptive, perfective, corrective, reuse, and code coverage. The goal of code cognition is to understand a program with a specific task in mind, like debugging. A mental model describes a programmer's representation of the code and includes both static elements like text structures, chunks, schemas, and plans, as well as dynamic elements like chunking, cross-referencing, and strategies.
The document discusses program comprehension and code cognition. It defines program comprehension as the process of gaining or regaining knowledge about a computer program. It lists five common maintenance tasks that require an understanding of the code: adaptive, perfective, corrective, reuse, and code coverage. The goal of code cognition is to understand a program with a specific task in mind, like debugging. A mental model describes a programmer's representation of the code and includes both static elements like text structures, chunks, schemas, and plans, as well as dynamic elements like chunking, cross-referencing, and strategies.
The document discusses program comprehension and code cognition. It defines program comprehension as the process of gaining or regaining knowledge about a computer program. It lists five common maintenance tasks that require an understanding of the code: adaptive, perfective, corrective, reuse, and code coverage. The goal of code cognition is to understand a program with a specific task in mind, like debugging. A mental model describes a programmer's representation of the code and includes both static elements like text structures, chunks, schemas, and plans, as well as dynamic elements like chunking, cross-referencing, and strategies.
The document discusses program comprehension and code cognition. It defines program comprehension as the process of gaining or regaining knowledge about a computer program. It lists five common maintenance tasks that require an understanding of the code: adaptive, perfective, corrective, reuse, and code coverage. The goal of code cognition is to understand a program with a specific task in mind, like debugging. A mental model describes a programmer's representation of the code and includes both static elements like text structures, chunks, schemas, and plans, as well as dynamic elements like chunking, cross-referencing, and strategies.
Submitted To: Sir Shahrukh Submitted By: Muhammad Huzaifa Fa-19/BSSE/219 Subject: Software Re-Engineering
Assignment # 2:
<-----------------> Q#1: What do you understand by the term program comprehension? Ans: Program Comprehension is the process of gaining new or regaining lost knowledge about a computer program. Good program comprehension is key to providing effective software maintenance and effective evolution of software. To understand the role of program comprehension, consider five kinds of tasks associated with program maintenance.
Table 1: Tasks and activity requiring code understanding
Maintenance Tasks Activities
Adaptive Understand system
Define adaptive requirements Code changes Debug Regression test Perfective Understand system Develop preliminary and detailed perfective design Code changes/additions Debug Regression test Corrective Understand system Repair code Regression test Reuse Understand problem Locate components Integrate components Code Coverage Understand problem Find solution based on predefined components Obtain and modify predefined components Integrate modified components Q#2: What is the goal of code cognition? Ans: The goal of code congition are given below; A code maintainer tries to understand a program with a specific goal in mind. e.g Debugging a program to detect the cause of a known failure. Identifying the goal can help in defining the scope of program comprehension. Scope of program comprehension: complete program or part of a program A program comprehension process is a sequence of activities that use existing knowledge about the program to generate new knowledge about it.
Q#3: What is mental model? Briefly elaborate the elements that comes under mental model?
Ans: A mental model describes a programmer’s mental representation of the program
being comprehended. A mental model of a program is not unique; different programmers view and interpret a programmer in different ways. A programmer develops a mental model by identifying both Static and dynamic elements of the program. Static elements of a mental model 1. Text- structures Code and its structure are known as Text-structures. It is useful in gaining control flow knowledge in program understanding. Understanding test-structures is the beginning of program comprehension. 2. Chunks A program chunk is a block of related code segment. Chunks enable programmers to create higher level abstractions from lower-level abstractions. 3. Schemas Schemas are generic knowledge structures that guide the programmer’s interpretations, inferences, expectations and attentions when passage are comprehended. The concept of programming plans correspond to the notion of schemas. 4. Plans A knowledge element is anything that is useful in understanding a program. Plans are broad kinds of knowledge elements used by programmer’s. 5. Hypotheses As programmer’s start reading code and the related documents, they start developing an understanding of the program to varying degrees. Programmer’s can tests the results of their understanding as conjectures. A conjectures may not be completely correct. Dynamic elements of a mental model 1. Chunking In a program, the lowest level of chunks are code segments. To understand a program in terms of its higher-level functionalities, a programmer creates a higher-level abstraction structures by combining lower level chunks. This process of creating a higher-level chunks is called chunking. 2. Cross-referencing Cross-referencing means being able to link elements of different abstraction levels. This help in building a mental model of the program. 3. Strategies A strategy is a planned sequence of actions to reach a specific goal. A strategy is formulated by identifying actions to achieve a goal.
