Hofmeister, JohannesSiegmund, JanetHolt, Daniel V.2023-03-082023-03-082016https://dl.gi.de/handle/20.500.12116/40713Identifiers are essential for the understanding of source code. Programmers can name them arbitrarily, which is a major source for hard to understand code. We investigated how an identifier’s length and semantics affect program comprehensibility. In a controlled experiment, we showed that identifier names using proper words lead to a faster defect detection than identifier names using abbreviated words or single letters.enText/Journal Article0720-8928