From code understanding needs to reverse engineering tool capabilities

A major portion of the software maintenance effort is spent on the reverse engineering activity of understanding existing software. If one can learn more about how programmers understand code successfully, one can build better tools to support the understanding process. This contributes to higher quality and improved efficiency of maintenance tasks. An integrated code comprehension model and experiences with it in an industrial setting are presented. Audio-taped, think-aloud reports were used to investigate how well the integrated code comprehension model works during industrial maintenance activities that range from code fixes to enhancements, code leverage, and reuse. The tapes were analyzed for information needs during maintenance activities, and tool capabilities were derived accordingly. The results are presented and discussed.