PPIG 1995 - 7th Annual Workshop
Maintenance of Object Oriented Systems: An Empirical Analysis of the Performance and Strategies of Programmers New to Object-Oriented Techniques
J. van Hillegersberg, K. Kumar, R.J. Welke
Abstract: The structured paradigm for software development did not solve the software maintenance problem. Currently object-orientation (OO) is viewed as a main opportunity to improve maintenance productivity. Although some promising results have been reported, other studies conclude that understanding and maintenance of OO systems can be difficult. Development and maintenance of OO systems is often performed by developers which were originally trained in structured languages and techniques and are relatively new to OO. This paper describes the results of a controlled experiment designed to evaluate the maintenance strategies and productivity of such developers. The experiment concludes that programmers with experience in structured development but with low experience in OO development have trouble understanding and maintaining an OO system.