Peer-reviewed research
Measuring Program Comprehension: A Large-Scale Field Study with Professionals
Xin Xia et al., IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, 2018
Read the originalRead on October 17, 2026
- What it is
- A field study that recorded what 78 professional developers did across seven real projects, including activity in browsers and document editors, not only the IDE. It reports the share of time spent on program comprehension.
- How much weight it carries
- Peer-reviewed journal article with a large professional sample and long recording period. It measures how time is split between activities, not how much code is typed or how fast.
Facts taken from this source
- In a field study of professional developers, developers spent about 58 percent of their time on program comprehension activities.
“developers spend ∼58% of their time on program comprehension activities” (Abstract)