Understanding code for reuse

Abstract

The software industry currently has problems meeting the high demand for software. One proposed solution is to reuse code from old projects, however this does not seem to be working. One reason could be the time and effort required to reuse. We identify the understanding of code as a key component of the time and effort spent during reuse, and look at tools that can help programmers to better understand code. Tools can utilise two approaches to support understanding: allowing the programmer to first hand experience of executing the code, and creating visualisations from these executions. We design, implement, and evaluate a tool that uses these two approaches.