Previous research in program understanding has been hampered by the
lack of an easy tool to measure the degree of that understanding. The cloze
procedure, suggested by Cook, Bregar, and Foote (1984) was an attempt to find
a simple, reliable, and valid measure of program understanding. In this
procedure, tokens...
A new system called sequential/parallel matrix grammars
for two-dimensional pattern processing is introduced and studied.
Miscellaneous language operations such as union, catenation (row
and column), Kleene's closure (row and column) and substitutions
are investigated. The equivalence of sequential/parallel matrix
languages and finite-turn repetitive checking automata is established.
Hierarchies for both...
This paper compares three classes of algorithms for finding
Hamiltonian circuits in graphs. Two of the classes are exhaustive
search procedures and this study finds them to have an exponential
dependence on the size of the graph. The third class of algorithms,
based on Warnsdorff's rule, is found to be...
Windows Exploratory Testing (WET) is examined to determine whether testers working in pairs produce higher quality results, are more productive, or exhibit greater confidence and job satisfaction than testers working alone. WET is a form of application testing where a tester (or testers) explores an unknown application to determine the...
Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology, Inc. (ABET) is the primary organization responsible for monitoring, evaluating and certifying the quality of engineering, engineering technology, computing and applied sciences education in the United States. In 2000, ABET changed the way computer science (and engineering) programs are accredited from a ‘checklist’ approach...
Quickersort, Straight Insertion Sort, Mehlhorn's AVL-tree Sorting Algorithm and Cook's new sorting algorithm are compared on nearly and nedium sorted lists. The ratio of the minimum number of list elements that must be removed so that the remaining portion of the list is in order to the size of the...
This study describes the software metrics analysis of IO releases of an embedded real-time telephone switching system developed by a German telecommunications firm. The micro-controlled application was written in a C-like macro assembly language. We developed a metrics program that computes the standard complexity metrics plus a number of information...
Tree systems are used in syntactic pattern recognition for
describing two-dimensional patterns. We extend results on tree
automata with the introduction of the subtree-invariant equivalence
relation R. R relates two trees when the appearance of one implies the
appearance of the other in similar trees. A new state minimizing
algorithm...
Controlling the "complexity" or "understandability"
of computer software is important because of its impact on
program testing and maintenance. Of the large number of
complexity metrics that have been developed to measure the
complexity of a computer program, most assess the
"micro-complexity" of each subprogram and few assess the
"macro-complexity"...
Guidelines for using style to improve computer program comprehension
have often been proposed without empirical testing. This thesis reports on the
results of three controlled experiments that investigated ways program style may be
used to aid comprehension of source code listings.
Experiments 1 and 2 were conducted using advanced computer...