{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,7,18]],"date-time":"2026-07-18T02:45:31Z","timestamp":1784342731662,"version":"3.55.0"},"reference-count":84,"publisher":"Springer Science and Business Media LLC","issue":"3","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2018,11,16]],"date-time":"2018-11-16T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1542326400000},"content-version":"tdm","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"http:\/\/www.springer.com\/tdm"}],"funder":[{"DOI":"10.13039\/501100001659","name":"Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","award":["LE 3382\/2-1"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["LE 3382\/2-1"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/501100001659","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":["link.springer.com"],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Empir Software Eng"],"published-print":{"date-parts":[[2019,6]]},"DOI":"10.1007\/s10664-018-9664-z","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2018,11,16]],"date-time":"2018-11-16T02:51:57Z","timestamp":1542336717000},"page":"1418-1457","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1007\/springer_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":26,"title":["Commenting source code: is it worth it for small programming tasks?"],"prefix":"10.1007","volume":"24","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-0147-3526","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Sebastian","family":"Nielebock","sequence":"first","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Dariusz","family":"Krolikowski","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-0283-248X","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Jacob","family":"Kr\u00fcger","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Thomas","family":"Leich","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Frank","family":"Ortmeier","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"297","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2018,11,16]]},"reference":[{"issue":"2","key":"9664_CR1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"442","DOI":"10.1007\/s10664-014-9315-y","volume":"20","author":"N Ali","year":"2015","unstructured":"Ali N, Sharafi Z, Gu\u00e9h\u00e9neuc YG, Antoniol G (2015) An empirical study on the importance of source code entities for requirements traceability. Empir Softw Eng (EMSE) 20(2):442\u2013478","journal-title":"Empir Softw Eng (EMSE)"},{"key":"9664_CR2","unstructured":"Anquetil N, Lethbridge T (1998) Assessing the relevance of identifier names in a legacy software system. In: Proceedings of the 8th conference of the centre for advanced studies on collaborative research (CASCON). IBM, pp 213\u2013222"},{"issue":"10","key":"9664_CR3","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"970","DOI":"10.1109\/TSE.2002.1041053","volume":"28","author":"G Antoniol","year":"2002","unstructured":"Antoniol G, Canfora G, Casazza G, De Lucia A, Merlo E (2002) Recovering traceability links between code and documentation. IEEE Trans Softw Eng (TSE) 28(10):970\u2013983","journal-title":"IEEE Trans Softw Eng (TSE)"},{"issue":"4","key":"9664_CR4","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"456","DOI":"10.1109\/32.799939","volume":"25","author":"VR Basili","year":"1999","unstructured":"Basili VR, Shull F, Lanubile F (1999) Building knowledge through families of experiments. IEEE Trans Softw Eng (TSE) 25(4):456\u2013473","journal-title":"IEEE Trans Softw Eng (TSE)"},{"key":"9664_CR5","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Beck F, Moseler O, Diehl S, Rey GD (2013) In situ understanding of performance bottlenecks through visually augmented code. In: Proceedings of the 21st international conference on program comprehension (ICPC). IEEE, pp 63\u201372","DOI":"10.1109\/ICPC.2013.6613834"},{"key":"9664_CR6","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Bezerra RMM, da Silva FQB, Santana AM, Magalhaes CVC, Santos RES (2015) Replication of empirical studies in software engineering: an update of a systematic mapping study. In: Proceedings of the 9th international symposium on empirical software engineering and measurement (ESEM). IEEE, pp 1\u20134","DOI":"10.1109\/ESEM.2015.7321213"},{"key":"9664_CR7","unstructured":"Boehm BW (1981) Software engineering economics. Prentice-Hall"},{"issue":"9","key":"9664_CR8","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"886","DOI":"10.1109\/TSE.2016.2527791","volume":"42","author":"J B\u00f6rstler","year":"2016","unstructured":"B\u00f6rstler J, Paech B (2016) The role of method chains and comments in software readability and comprehension\u2014an experiment. IEEE Trans Softw Eng (TSE) 42(9):886\u2013898","journal-title":"IEEE Trans Softw Eng (TSE)"},{"key":"9664_CR9","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Briand L, Bunse C, Daly J, Differding C (1997) An experimental comparison of the maintainability of object-oriented and structured design documents. In: Proceedings of the 5th international conference on software maintenance (ICSM). IEEE, pp 130\u2013138","DOI":"10.1109\/ICSM.1997.624239"},{"issue":"4","key":"9664_CR10","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"546","DOI":"10.1109\/TSE.2009.70","volume":"36","author":"RP Buse","year":"2010","unstructured":"Buse RP, Weimer WR (2010) Learning a metric for code readability. IEEE Trans Softw Eng (TSE) 36(4):546\u2013558","journal-title":"IEEE Trans Softw Eng (TSE)"},{"key":"9664_CR11","unstructured":"Carver JC (2010) Towards reporting guidelines for experimental replications: a proposal. In: Proceedings of the 1st international workshop on replication in empirical software engineering (RESER)"},{"issue":"1","key":"9664_CR12","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"13","DOI":"10.1109\/52.43044","volume":"7","author":"EJ Chikofsky","year":"1990","unstructured":"Chikofsky EJ, Cross JH (1990) Reverse engineering and design recovery: a taxonomy. IEEE Soft 7(1):13\u201317","journal-title":"IEEE Soft"},{"key":"9664_CR13","unstructured":"Cook TD, Campbell DT (1979) Quasi-experimentation: design & analysis issues for field settings. Houghton Mifflin"},{"key":"9664_CR14","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Corazza A, Maggio V, Scanniello G (2015) On the coherence between comments and implementations in source code. In: Proceedings of the 41st euromicro conference on software engineering and advanced applications (SEAA). IEEE, pp 76\u201383","DOI":"10.1109\/SEAA.2015.20"},{"key":"9664_CR15","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Cornelissen B, Holten D, Zaidman A, Moonen L, van Wijk JJ, Van Deursen A (2007) Understanding execution traces using massive sequence and circular bundle views. In: Proceedings of the 15th international conference on program comprehension (ICPC). IEEE, pp 49\u201358","DOI":"10.1109\/ICPC.2007.39"},{"issue":"1","key":"9664_CR16","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"292","DOI":"10.1177\/1536867X1501500117","volume":"15","author":"A Dinno","year":"2015","unstructured":"Dinno A (2015) Nonparametric pairwise multiple comparisons in independent groups using dunn\u2019s test. Stata J 15(1):292\u2013300","journal-title":"Stata J"},{"key":"9664_CR17","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Dunsmore HE (1985) The effect of comments, mnemonic names, and modularity: some university experiment results. In: Empirical foundations of information and software science. Springer, pp 189\u2013196","DOI":"10.1007\/978-1-4613-2521-5_16"},{"issue":"8","key":"9664_CR18","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"512","DOI":"10.1145\/358589.358596","volume":"25","author":"JL Elshoff","year":"1982","unstructured":"Elshoff JL, Marcotty M (1982) Improving computer program readability to aid modification. Commun ACM 25(8):512\u2013521","journal-title":"Commun ACM"},{"key":"9664_CR19","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Feigenspan J, K\u00e4stner C, Liebig J, Apel S, Hanenberg S (2012) Measuring programming experience. In: Proceedings of the 20th international conference on program comprehension (ICPC). IEEE, pp 73-82","DOI":"10.1109\/ICPC.2012.6240511"},{"issue":"4","key":"9664_CR20","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"699","DOI":"10.1007\/s10664-012-9208-x","volume":"18","author":"J Feigenspan","year":"2013","unstructured":"Feigenspan J, K\u00e4stner C, Apel S, Liebig J, Schulze M, Dachselt R, Papendieck M, Leich T, Saake G (2013) Do background colors improve program comprehension in the# ifdef hell? Empir Softw Eng (EMSE) 18(4):699\u2013745","journal-title":"Empir Softw Eng (EMSE)"},{"key":"9664_CR21","unstructured":"Fisher RA (1936) Statistical methods for research workers, 6th edn. Oliver and Boyd Edinbrug, Tweeddale Court London: 33 Paternoste R Row, E.C."},{"key":"9664_CR22","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Fluri B, Wursch M, Gall HC (2007) Do code and comments co-evolve? On the relation between source code and comment changes. In: Proceedings of the 14th working conference on reverse engineering (WCRE). IEEE, pp 70\u201379","DOI":"10.1109\/WCRE.2007.21"},{"key":"9664_CR23","volume-title":"Design patterns: elements of reusable object-oriented software","author":"E Gamma","year":"1995","unstructured":"Gamma E, Helm R, Johnson R, Vlissides J (1995) Design patterns: elements of reusable object-oriented software. Addison-Wesley, Reading"},{"issue":"2","key":"9664_CR24","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"93","DOI":"10.1037\/0003-066X.59.2.93","volume":"59","author":"SD Gosling","year":"2004","unstructured":"Gosling SD, Vazire S, Srivastava S, John OP (2004) Should we trust web-based studies? a comparative analysis of six preconceptions about internet questionnaires. Am Psychol 59(2):93","journal-title":"Am Psychol"},{"issue":"5","key":"9664_CR25","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"1335","DOI":"10.1007\/s10664-013-9289-1","volume":"19","author":"S Hanenberg","year":"2014","unstructured":"Hanenberg S, Kleinschmager S, Robbes R, Tanter \u00c9, Stefik A (2014) An empirical study on the impact of static typing on software maintainability. Empir Softw Eng (EMSE) 19(5):1335\u20131382","journal-title":"Empir Softw Eng (EMSE)"},{"key":"9664_CR26","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Hofmeister J, Siegmund J, Holt DV (2017) Shorter identifier names take longer to comprehend. In: Proceedings of the 24th international conference on software analysis, evolution and reengineering (SANER). IEEE, pp 217\u2013227","DOI":"10.1109\/SANER.2017.7884623"},{"issue":"3","key":"9664_CR27","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"201","DOI":"10.1023\/A:1026586415054","volume":"5","author":"M H\u00f6st","year":"2000","unstructured":"H\u00f6st M, Regnell B, Wohlin C (2000) Using students as subjects - a comparative study of students and professionals in lead-time impact assessment. Empir Softw Eng (EMSE) 5(3):201\u2013214","journal-title":"Empir Softw Eng (EMSE)"},{"key":"9664_CR28","unstructured":"Jalali S, Wohlin C (2012) Systematic literature studies: database searches vs. backward snowballing. In: Proceedings of the 6th international symposium on empirical software engineering and measurement (ESEM). ACM, pp 29\u201338"},{"key":"9664_CR29","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Jbara A, Feitelson DG (2015) How programmers read regular code: a controlled experiment using eye tracking. In: Proceedings of the 23rd international conference on program comprehension (ICPC). IEEE, pp 244\u2013254","DOI":"10.1109\/ICPC.2015.35"},{"key":"9664_CR30","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Ji W, Berger T, Antkiewicz M, Czarnecki K (2015) Maintaining feature traceability with embedded annotations. In: Proceedings of the 19th international software product line conference (SPLC). ACM, pp 61\u201370","DOI":"10.1145\/2791060.2791107"},{"key":"9664_CR31","unstructured":"Jiang ZM, Hassan AE (2006) Examining the evolution of code comments in PostgreSQL. In: Proceedings of the 3rd working conference on mining software repositories (MSR). ACM, pp 179\u2013180"},{"key":"9664_CR32","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Juristo N, Vegas S (2009) Using differences among replications of software engineering experiments to gain knowledge. In: Proceedings of the 24th international symposium on empirical software engineering and measurement (ESEM). IEEE, pp 356\u2013366","DOI":"10.1109\/ESEM.2009.5314236"},{"key":"9664_CR33","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Khamis N, Witte R, Rilling J (2010) Automatic quality assessment of source code comments: the JavadocMiner. In: Proceedings of the 9th international conference on natural language processing and information system (NLDB). Springer, pp 68\u201379","DOI":"10.1007\/978-3-642-13881-2_7"},{"issue":"2","key":"9664_CR34","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"97","DOI":"10.1093\/comjnl\/27.2.97","volume":"27","author":"DE Knuth","year":"1984","unstructured":"Knuth DE (1984) Literate programming. Comput J 27(2):97\u2013111","journal-title":"Comput J"},{"key":"9664_CR35","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Kobayashi K, Kamimura M, Yano K, Kato K, Matsuo A (2013) SArF Map: visualizing software architecture from feature and layer viewpoints. In: Proceedings of the 21st international conference on program comprehension (ICPC). IEEE, pp 43\u201352","DOI":"10.1109\/ICPC.2013.6613832"},{"key":"9664_CR36","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Koenemann J, Robertson SP (1991) Expert problem solving strategies for program comprehension. In: Proceedings of the 9th conference on human factors in computing systems (CHI). ACM, pp 125\u2013130","DOI":"10.1145\/108844.108863"},{"issue":"3","key":"9664_CR37","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"276","DOI":"10.1007\/s10664-011-9172-x","volume":"17","author":"T Kosar","year":"2012","unstructured":"Kosar T, Mernik M, Carver JC (2012) Program comprehension of domain-specific and general-purpose languages: comparison using a family of experiments. Empir Softw Eng (EMSE) 17(3):276\u2013304","journal-title":"Empir Softw Eng (EMSE)"},{"key":"9664_CR38","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Kramer D (1999) API documentation from source code comments: a case study of Javadoc. In: Proceedings of the 17th annual international conference on computer documentation (SIGDOC). ACM, pp 147\u2013153","DOI":"10.1145\/318372.318577"},{"key":"9664_CR39","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Kr\u00fcger J, Gu W, Shen H, Mukelabai M, Hebig R, Berger T (2018) Towards a better understanding of software features and their characteristics: a case study of marlin. In: Proceedings of the 12th workshop on variability modelling of software-intensive systems (VaMoS). ACM, pp 105\u2013112","DOI":"10.1145\/3168365.3168371"},{"key":"9664_CR40","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Kr\u00fcger J, Wiemann J, Fenske W, Saake G, Leich T (2018) Do you remember this source code?. In: Proceedings of the 40th international conference on software engineering (ICSE). ACM, pp 764\u2013775","DOI":"10.1145\/3180155.3180215"},{"issue":"260","key":"9664_CR41","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"583","DOI":"10.1080\/01621459.1952.10483441","volume":"47","author":"WH Kruskal","year":"1952","unstructured":"Kruskal WH, Wallis WA (1952) Use of ranks in one-criterion variance analysis. J Am Stat Assoc 47(260):583\u2013621","journal-title":"J Am Stat Assoc"},{"issue":"4","key":"9664_CR42","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"303","DOI":"10.1007\/s11334-007-0031-2","volume":"3","author":"D Lawrie","year":"2007","unstructured":"Lawrie D, Morrell C, Feild H, Binkley D (2007) Effective identifier names for comprehension and memory. Innov Syst Softw Eng 3(4):303\u2013318","journal-title":"Innov Syst Softw Eng"},{"issue":"2","key":"9664_CR43","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"413","DOI":"10.1007\/s10664-014-9314-z","volume":"20","author":"P M\u00e4der","year":"2015","unstructured":"M\u00e4der P, Egyed A (2015) Do developers benefit from requirements traceability when evolving and maintaining a software system? Empir Softw Eng (EMSE) 20 (2):413\u2013441","journal-title":"Empir Softw Eng (EMSE)"},{"key":"9664_CR44","unstructured":"Martin RC (2009) Clean code: a handbook of agile software craftsmanship. Pearson Education"},{"issue":"1","key":"9664_CR45","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"176","DOI":"10.1007\/s10664-013-9282-8","volume":"20","author":"M Martinez","year":"2015","unstructured":"Martinez M, Monperrus M (2015) Mining software repair models for reasoning on the search space of automated program fixing. Empir Soft Eng (EMSE) 20(1):176\u2013205","journal-title":"Empir Soft Eng (EMSE)"},{"issue":"8","key":"9664_CR46","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"44","DOI":"10.1109\/2.402076","volume":"28","author":"A von Mayrhauser","year":"1995","unstructured":"von Mayrhauser A, Vans AM (1995) Program comprehension during software maintenance and evolution. IEEE Comput 28(8):44\u201355","journal-title":"IEEE Comput"},{"key":"9664_CR47","unstructured":"McBurney PW, Mcmillan C (2014) Automatic documentation generation via source code summarization of method context. In: Proceedings of the 22nd international conference on program comprehension (ICPC). ACM, pp 279\u2013290"},{"issue":"1","key":"9664_CR48","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"17","DOI":"10.1007\/s10664-014-9344-6","volume":"21","author":"PW McBurney","year":"2016","unstructured":"McBurney PW, McMillan C (2016) An empirical study of the textual similarity between source code and source code summaries. Empir Soft Eng (EMSE) 21(1):17\u201342","journal-title":"Empir Soft Eng (EMSE)"},{"key":"9664_CR49","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Norcio AF (1982) Indentation, documentation and programmer comprehension. In: Proceedings of the 1st conference on human factors in computing systems (CHI). ACM, pp 118\u2013120","DOI":"10.1145\/800049.801766"},{"key":"9664_CR50","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Nurvitadhi E, Leung WW, Cook C (2003) Do class comments aid Java program understanding?. In: Proceedings of the 33rd annual frontiers in education, vol 1. IEEE, pp T3C\u2013T3C","DOI":"10.1109\/FIE.2003.1263332"},{"key":"9664_CR51","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Perry DE, Porter AA, Votta LG (2000) Empirical studies of software engineering: a roadmap. In: Proceedings of the conference on the future of software engineering. ACM, pp 345\u2013355","DOI":"10.1145\/336512.336586"},{"key":"9664_CR52","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Rahman MM, Roy CK, Keivanloo I (2015) Recommending insightful comments for source code using crowdsourced knowledge. In: Proceedings of the 15th international working conference on source code analysis and manipulation (SCAM). IEEE, pp 81\u201390","DOI":"10.1109\/SCAM.2015.7335404"},{"key":"9664_CR53","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Ratol IK (2017) Detecting fragile comments. In: Proceedings of the 32nd international conference on automated software engineering (ASE). IEEE Press, pp 112\u2013122","DOI":"10.1109\/ASE.2017.8115624"},{"key":"9664_CR54","unstructured":"Runeson P (2003) Using students as experiment subjects \u2013 an analysis on graduate and freshmen student data. In: Proceedings of the 7th international conference on evaluation and assessment in software engineering (EASE). Lund University, pp 95\u2013102"},{"key":"9664_CR55","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Salviulo F, Scanniello G (2014) Dealing with identifiers and comments in source code comprehension and maintenance: results from an ethnographically-informed study with students and professionals. In: Proceedings of the 18th international conference on evaluation and assessment in software engineering (EASE). ACM, pp 48","DOI":"10.1145\/2601248.2601251"},{"key":"9664_CR56","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Schr\u00f6ter I, Kr\u00fcger J, Siegmund J, Leich T (2017) Comprehending studies on program comprehension. In: Proceedings of the 25th international conference on program comprehension (ICPC). IEEE, pp 308\u2013311","DOI":"10.1109\/ICPC.2017.9"},{"key":"9664_CR57","unstructured":"Seiler M, Paech B (2017) Using tags to support feature management across issue tracking systems and version control systems. In: Requirements engineering: foundation for software quality. Springer, pp 174\u2013180"},{"key":"9664_CR58","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Shakeel Y, Kr\u00fcger J, von Nostitz-Wallwitz I, Lausberger C, Campero Durand G, Saake G, Leich T (2018) Automated literature analysis - threats and experiences. In: Proceedings of the international workshop on software engineering for science (SE4Science). ACM, pp 20\u201327","DOI":"10.1145\/3194747.3194748"},{"issue":"1","key":"9664_CR59","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"122","DOI":"10.1109\/52.476304","volume":"13","author":"D Sharon","year":"1996","unstructured":"Sharon D (1996) Meeting the challenge of software maintenance. IEEE Soft 13 (1):122\u2013125","journal-title":"IEEE Soft"},{"key":"9664_CR60","unstructured":"Sheppard S, Borst M, Curtis B, Love L (1978) Predicting programmers\u2019 ability to modify software. Tech Rep TR\u20147a\u20143B8100 3, General electric"},{"key":"9664_CR61","volume-title":"Nonparametric statistics for the behavioral sciences","author":"S Siegel","year":"1956","unstructured":"Siegel S (1956) Nonparametric statistics for the behavioral sciences. McGraw-Hill Kogakusha LTD, Tokyo"},{"key":"9664_CR62","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Siegmund J (2016) Program comprehension: past, present, and future. In: Proceedings of the 23rd international conference on software analysis, evolution and reengineering (SANER). IEEE, pp 13\u201320","DOI":"10.1109\/SANER.2016.35"},{"key":"9664_CR63","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Siegmund J, Siegmund N, Apel S (2015) Views on internal and external validity in empirical software engineering. In: Proceedings of the 37th international conference on software engineering (ICSE), vol 1. IEEE, pp 9\u201319","DOI":"10.1109\/ICSE.2015.24"},{"key":"9664_CR64","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Sommerlad P, Zgraggen G, Corbat T, Felber L (2008) Retaining comments when refactoring code. In: Proceedings of the 23rd conference on object-oriented programming, systems, languages and applications (OOPSLA). ACM, pp 653\u2013662","DOI":"10.1145\/1449814.1449817"},{"key":"9664_CR65","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Sridhara G (2016) Automatically detecting the up-to-date status of todo comments in Java programs. In: Proceedings of the 9th India software engineering conference (ISEC). ACM, pp 16\u201325","DOI":"10.1145\/2856636.2856638"},{"key":"9664_CR66","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Sridhara G, Hill E, Muppaneni D, Pollock L (2010) Towards automatically generating summary comments for Java methods. In: Proceedings of the 25th international conference on automated software engineering (ASE). ACM, pp 43\u201352","DOI":"10.1145\/1858996.1859006"},{"issue":"5","key":"9664_CR67","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"494","DOI":"10.1109\/TSE.1984.5010272","volume":"SE-10","author":"TA Standish","year":"1984","unstructured":"Standish TA (1984) An essay on software reuse. IEEE Trans Soft Eng (TSE) SE-10(5):494\u2013497. https:\/\/ieeexplore.ieee.org\/abstract\/document\/5010272","journal-title":"IEEE Trans Soft Eng (TSE)"},{"key":"9664_CR68","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Steidl D, Hummel B, Juergens E (2013) Quality analysis of source code comments. In: Proceedings of the 21st international conference on program comprehension (ICPC). IEEE, pp 83\u201392","DOI":"10.1109\/ICPC.2013.6613836"},{"key":"9664_CR69","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Storey MAD (2005) Theories, methods and tools in program comprehension: past, present and future. In: Proceedings of the 13th international workshop on program comprehension (IWPC). IEEE, pp 181\u2013191","DOI":"10.1109\/WPC.2005.38"},{"key":"9664_CR70","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Storey MAD, Wong K, Muller HH (1997) How do program understanding tools affect how programmers understand programs?. In: Proceedings of the 4th working conference on reverse engineering (WCRE). IEEE, pp 12\u201321","DOI":"10.1109\/WCRE.1997.624572"},{"key":"9664_CR71","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Svahnberg M, Aurum A, Wohlin C (2008) Using students as subjects - an empirical evaluation. In: Proceedings of the 2nd international symposium on empirical software engineering and measurement (ESEM). ACM, pp 288\u2013290","DOI":"10.1145\/1414004.1414055"},{"issue":"3","key":"9664_CR72","first-page":"143","volume":"4","author":"AA Takang","year":"1996","unstructured":"Takang AA, Grubb PA, Macredie RD (1996) The effects of comments and identifier names on program comprehensibility: an experimental investigation. J Program Lang (JPL) 4(3):143\u2013167","journal-title":"J Program Lang (JPL)"},{"key":"9664_CR73","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Tan SH, Marinov D, Tan L, Leavens GT (2012) @tComment: testing JavaDoc comments to detect comment-code inconsistencies. In: Proceedings of the 5th international conference on software testing, verification and validation (ICST). IEEE, pp 260\u2013269. https:\/\/www.computer.org\/csdl\/proceedings\/icst\/2012\/4670\/00\/4670a260-abs.html","DOI":"10.1109\/ICST.2012.106"},{"issue":"3","key":"9664_CR74","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"44","DOI":"10.1145\/382208.382523","volume":"17","author":"T Tenny","year":"1985","unstructured":"Tenny T (1985) Procedures and comments vs. the banker\u2019s algorithm. ACM SIGCSE Bulletin 17(3):44\u201353","journal-title":"ACM SIGCSE Bulletin"},{"issue":"9","key":"9664_CR75","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"1271","DOI":"10.1109\/32.6171","volume":"14","author":"T Tenny","year":"1988","unstructured":"Tenny T (1988) Program readability: procedures versus comments. IEEE Trans Soft Eng (TSE) 14(9):1271\u20131279","journal-title":"IEEE Trans Soft Eng (TSE)"},{"key":"9664_CR76","unstructured":"Tiarks R (2011) What maintenance programmers really do: an observational study. In: Proceedings of the 13th workshop on software reengineering, pp 36\u201337"},{"key":"9664_CR77","unstructured":"Trochim WM, Donnelly JP, Arora K (2016) Research methods the essential knowledge base, 2nd edn. Cengage Learning, Boston"},{"key":"9664_CR78","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Trumper J, Dollner J, Telea A (2013) Multiscale visual comparison of execution traces. In: Proceedings of the 21st international conference on program comprehension (ICPC). IEEE, pp 53\u201362","DOI":"10.1109\/ICPC.2013.6613833"},{"key":"9664_CR79","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1017\/CBO9780511585852","volume-title":"The elements of Java (tm) style","author":"A Vermeulen","year":"2000","unstructured":"Vermeulen A (2000) The elements of Java (tm) style. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge"},{"key":"9664_CR80","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Wohlin C (2014) Guidelines for snowballing in systematic literature studies and a replication in software engineering. In: Proceedings of the 18th international conference on evaluation and assessment in software engineering (EASE). ACM, pp 1\u201310","DOI":"10.1145\/2601248.2601268"},{"key":"9664_CR81","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1007\/978-3-642-29044-2","volume-title":"Experimentation in software engineering","author":"C Wohlin","year":"2012","unstructured":"Wohlin C, Runeson P, H\u00f6st M, Ohlsson MC, Regnell B, Wessl\u00e9n A (2012) Experimentation in software engineering. Springer, Berlin"},{"key":"9664_CR82","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Wong E, Yang J, Tan L (2013) Autocomment: mining question and answer sites for automatic comment generation. In: Proceedings of the 28th international conference on automated software engineering (ASE). IEEE, pp 562\u2013567","DOI":"10.1109\/ASE.2013.6693113"},{"key":"9664_CR83","unstructured":"Woodfield SN, Dunsmore HE, Shen VY (1981) The effect of modularization and comments on program comprehension. In: Proceedings of the 5th international conference on software engineering (ICSE). IEEE, pp 215\u2013223"},{"issue":"4","key":"9664_CR84","first-page":"1","volume":"30","author":"AT Ying","year":"2005","unstructured":"Ying AT, Wright JL, Abrams S (2005) Source code that talks: an exploration of eclipse task comments and their implication to repository mining. ACM SIGSOFT Soft Eng Notes (SEN) 30(4):1\u20135","journal-title":"ACM SIGSOFT Soft Eng Notes (SEN)"}],"container-title":["Empirical Software Engineering"],"original-title":[],"language":"en","link":[{"URL":"http:\/\/link.springer.com\/content\/pdf\/10.1007\/s10664-018-9664-z.pdf","content-type":"application\/pdf","content-version":"vor","intended-application":"text-mining"},{"URL":"http:\/\/link.springer.com\/article\/10.1007\/s10664-018-9664-z\/fulltext.html","content-type":"text\/html","content-version":"vor","intended-application":"text-mining"},{"URL":"http:\/\/link.springer.com\/content\/pdf\/10.1007\/s10664-018-9664-z.pdf","content-type":"application\/pdf","content-version":"vor","intended-application":"similarity-checking"}],"deposited":{"date-parts":[[2026,4,4]],"date-time":"2026-04-04T02:42:19Z","timestamp":1775270539000},"score":1,"resource":{"primary":{"URL":"http:\/\/link.springer.com\/10.1007\/s10664-018-9664-z"}},"subtitle":[],"short-title":[],"issued":{"date-parts":[[2018,11,16]]},"references-count":84,"journal-issue":{"issue":"3","published-print":{"date-parts":[[2019,6]]}},"alternative-id":["9664"],"URL":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1007\/s10664-018-9664-z","relation":{},"ISSN":["1382-3256","1573-7616"],"issn-type":[{"value":"1382-3256","type":"print"},{"value":"1573-7616","type":"electronic"}],"subject":[],"published":{"date-parts":[[2018,11,16]]},"assertion":[{"value":"16 November 2018","order":1,"name":"first_online","label":"First Online","group":{"name":"ArticleHistory","label":"Article History"}}]}}