Investigating the impact of logical reasoning in honing code comprehension skills: An empirical analysis

Code comprehension is an act of understanding the working of source code snippets using technical and cognitive skills. It is an important step in software maintenance as it requires the debugging of source code snippets swiftly. Working under a time constraint require an experienced programmer to demonstrate his technical skills confidently by maintaining his stress-free composure and utilizing his logical reasoning (cognitive) skills efficiently. Thus, it is essential to assess the expertise level of programmers by measuring both their technical and cognitive skills. Therefore, the primary aim of our study is to analyses whether logical reasoning along with technical skills impacts the code comprehension abilities of programmers, especially in the context of technical education and professional practice. The overall proficiency of programmers is determined by measuring the comprehension measure index values obtained through two separate approaches P1 and P2, defined in this empirical study. The approach P1 is a traditional approach which calculates the comprehension measure index (CMI) values of fifty participants based on the outputs provided by the participants through programming data only. The second method, P2 combines the technical and logical reasoning data to obtain comprehension measure index values. The proficiency of programmers in code comprehension has been categorized into five separate classes and based on the comprehension measure index values computed through both approaches, the programmers are classified. The study findings indicate that combining cognitive with technical skills offers a more comprehensive insight into a programmer’s abilities. It is visible from the variations in the categorization of comprehension measure indices among participants when cognitive factors are taken into consideration. More precisely, a change of 26% difference in CMI values, indicates that cognitive skills have a significant impact on code comprehension results. This study underscores the importance of a holistic approach to evaluating programmers’ proficiency, incorporating both technical and cognitive skills. Such an approach not only improve educational strategies in computer science but also enhances workforce management in the IT industry, ensuring that projects are aligned with the comprehensive capabilities of programmers.