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| http://www2.umassd.edu/SWPI/ProcessBibliography/bib-codereading2I-P.html
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| Miara, J. R., J. A. Musselman, J. A. Navarro, and B. Shneiderman. Program
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| Indentation and Comprehensibility. Comm. ACM 26, 11 (Nov. 1983), 861-867.
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| Abstract: The consensus in the programming community is that indentation
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| aids program comprehension, although many studies do not back this up. We
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| tested program comprehension on a Pascal program. Two styles of indentation
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| were used-blocked and nonblocked- in addition to four possible levels of
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| indentation (0, 2, 4, 6 spaces). Both experienced and novice subjects were
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| used. Although blocking style made no difference, the level of indentation
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| had a significant effect on program comprehension. (2-4 spaces had the
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| highest mean score for program comprehension.) We recommend that a moderate
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| level of indentation be used to increase program comprehension and user
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| satisfaction.
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| This paper addresses the impact of indentation and blocking on program
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| comprehension. By blocked indentation, the authors mean that statements
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| immediately within a begin ... end pair share a common left margin with
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| those delimiting keywords. In nonblocked style, the delimited statements are
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| indented further. The authors review previous studies of indentation, noting
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| that their support for the hypothesis that program indentation aids program
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| readability and comprehension is, at best, ambiguous. They explain possible
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| reasons for the discrepancy between their results and those reported by
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| others. The results of the experiments reported here favor the view that
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| indentation aids comprehension, but they also show that excessive
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| indentation (6 or more spaces) does not increase the effect. Interestingly
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| enough, the novices in the study reacted very favorably to indented code and
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| rejected the nonindented program. Experts, on the other hand, showed no such
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| prejudice. This is a good paper on the effect of formatting practices. The
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| experiment was done carefully, which makes it especially relevant to those
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| interested in empirical studies. The practical wisdom to take away from the
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| paper is simple:
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| indent code three spaces to show its structure. This paper is recommended
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| for both instructors and students.
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