A qualitative investigation of landmarks in software code navigation

Document Type

Conference Proceeding

Publication Date

3-23-2018

Abstract

A large body of research is available on software clustering and many tools have been developed to assist software programmers to navigate and easily comprehend large software systems. However, minimal attention has been paid to the area of visual clustering to support code navigation. In this paper, we leverage clustering-based visualization to explore static-dependency-based landmarks present in the code base. Landmarks are important legibility features that developers use as reference points. Our qualitative investigation of a Java project reveals developers' reliance on the landmarks during code navigation and shows the promise of using static dependencies to uncover the landmarks in the software space.

Publication Title

ACM International Conference Proceeding Series

First Page

80

Last Page

84

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

10.1145/3193077.3193091

ISBN

9781450363594

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