Meaningful Identifier Names: The Case of Single-Letter Variables

Beniamini, Gal; Gingichashvili, Sarah; Orbach, Alon Klein; Feitelson, Dror G.

doi:10.1109/icpc.2017.18

Cited by 46 publications

(54 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…The differences between reading, modifying and reviewing code from other people and own code being read, modified and reviewed by other people are statistically significant at α < 0.05 (χ 2 = 6.3143; p = 0.043). 5 When divided into subgroups (see Figure 4), we can see statistically significant differences according to a Fisher's exact test (p < 0.01). Almost all developers read, modify and review code from other people, whereas only about half of the students do so, with educators lying in between.…”

Section: Working With Codementioning

confidence: 95%

“…A recent study of 210 open-source Java projects regarding the effect of coding conventions showed that size, comments and indentation affected readability most [22]. Furthermore, recent research in program comprehension shows that misleading names are more problematic than meaningless names [2], but that specific one-letter variables still can convey meaning [5]. It has also been shown that low-level structural differences affect program understanding, for example that for-loops are significantly harder to understand than if-statements [1] and that "maintaining undisciplined annotations is more time consuming and error prone" than maintaining disciplined ones [24].…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

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"I know it when I see it" Perceptions of Code Quality

Börstler

Störrle²,

Toll

et al. 2018

Proceedings of the 2017 ITiCSE Conference on Working Group Reports

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Context. Code quality is a key issue in software development. The ability to develop high quality software is therefore a key learning goal of computing programs. However, there are no universally accepted measures to assess the quality of code and current standards are considered weak. Furthermore, there are many facets to code quality. Defining and explaining the concept of code quality is therefore a challenge faced by many educators. Objectives. In this working group, we investigated code quality as perceived by students, educators, and professional developers, in particular, the differences in their views of code quality and which quality aspects they consider as more or less important. Furthermore, we investigated their sources for information about code quality and its assessment. Methods. We interviewed 34 students, educators and professional developers regarding their perceptions of code quality. For the interviews they brought along code from their own experience to discuss and exemplify code quality.Results. There was no common definition of code quality among * Working group co-leaders:

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Section: Working With Codementioning

confidence: 95%

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

"I know it when I see it" Perceptions of Code Quality

Börstler

Störrle²,

Toll

et al. 2018

Proceedings of the 2017 ITiCSE Conference on Working Group Reports

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The di erences between reading, modifying and reviewing code from other people and own code being read, modi ed and reviewed by other people are statistically signi cant at α < 0.05 (χ 2 = 6.3143; p = 0.043). 5 When divided into subgroups (see Figure 4), we can see statistically signi cant di erences according to a Fisher's exact test (p < 0.01). Almost all developers read, modify and review code from other people, whereas only about half of the students do so, with educators lying in between.…”

Section: Working With Codementioning

confidence: 96%

“…A recent study of 210 open-source Java projects regarding the e ect of coding conventions showed that size, comments and indentation a ected readability most [22]. Furthermore, recent research in program comprehension shows that misleading names are more problematic than meaningless names [2], but that speci c one-letter variables still can convey meaning [5]. It has also been shown that low-level structural di erences a ect program understanding, for example that for-loops are signi cantly harder to understand than if-statements [1] and that "maintaining undisciplined annotations is more time consuming and error prone" than maintaining disciplined ones [24].…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

"I know it when I see it"

Börstler

Störrle²,

Toll

et al. 2017

Proceedings of the 2017 ACM Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Context. Code quality is a key issue in software development. The ability to develop high quality software is therefore a key learning goal of computing programs. However, there are no universally accepted measures to assess the quality of code and current standards are considered weak. Furthermore, there are many facets to code quality. De ning and explaining the concept of code quality is therefore a challenge faced by many educators. Objectives. In this working group, we investigated code quality as perceived by students, educators, and professional developers, in particular, the di erences in their views of code quality and which quality aspects they consider as more or less important. Furthermore, we investigated their sources for information about code quality and its assessment. Methods. We interviewed 34 students, educators and professional developers regarding their perceptions of code quality. For the interviews they brought along code from their own experience to discuss and exemplify code quality.

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“…The naming of identifiers in the source code has been extensively studied (see, e.g., recent studies of this subject [1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], [7], [8]). Still, the impact of the variable name choice on code readability and maintainability is controversial, as witnessed, e.g., by recent studies of Beniamini et al [3] and Hofmeister et al [5] reaching contradictory conclusions.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

How do Scratch Programmers Name Variables and Procedures?

Swidan

Serebrenik

Hermans

2017

2017 IEEE 17th International Working Conference on Source Code Analysis and Manipulation (SCAM)

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Research shows the importance of selecting good names to identifiers in software code: more meaningful names improve readability. In particular, several guidelines encourage long and descriptive variable names. A recent study analyzed the use of variable names in five programming languages, focusing on single-letter variable names, because of the apparent contradiction between their frequent use and the fact that these variables violate the aforementioned guidelines. In this paper, we analyze variables in Scratch, a popular blockbased language aimed at children. We start by replicating the above single-letter study for Scratch. We augment this study by analyzing single-letter procedure names, and by investigating the use of Scratch specific naming patterns: spaces in variable names, numerics as variables and textual labels in procedure names. The results of our analysis show that Scratch programmers often prefer longer identifier names than developers in other languages, while Scratch procedure names have even longer names than Scratch variables. For the single-letter variables, the most frequent names are x, y, and i. Single-letter procedures are less popular, but show more tendency to be in upper case. When compared to the other programming languages, the usage of single uppercase letters in Scratch variables seems to be similar to the pattern found in Perl, while for the lowercase letters-to the pattern found in Java. Concerning Scratch specific features, 44% of the unique variable names and 34% of the projects in the dataset include at least one space. The usage of textual labels between parameters in procedure names appears as not common, however textual patterns used imply an influence from textual languages, for example by using brackets. Previous research indicate the identifier names as one significant issue in transitioning from visual block-based to textual programming languages. The naming patterns we found support this claim for Scratch programmers who may incur difficulties when transitioning to the use of mainstream textual programming languages. Those languages restrict the use of spaces in identifiers and more often divert into short and single-letter namestendencies opposite to the naming preferences in Scratch.

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Meaningful Identifier Names: The Case of Single-Letter Variables

Cited by 46 publications

References 11 publications

"I know it when I see it" Perceptions of Code Quality

"I know it when I see it" Perceptions of Code Quality

"I know it when I see it"

How do Scratch Programmers Name Variables and Procedures?

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