article

Free access

The influence of color on program readability and comprehensibility

Author:

Gerard K. RamballyAuthors Info & Claims

ACM SIGCSE Bulletin, Volume 18, Issue 1

Pages 173 - 181

https://doi.org/10.1145/953055.5702

Published: 01 February 1986 Publication History

PDF eReader

Abstract

Readability and comprehensibility are among the most important attributes of a program. A program that is easy to read and understand is easier to test, maintain, and modify. Many factors affect program readability and comprehensibility, including variable names, internal documentation, modularity, and so on. This paper investigates the influence of color on program readability and comprehension. Three color schemes were used: Color-scheme-A used different colors to indicate the different blocks in a program; Color-scheme-B used different colors to identify the various statements function in the program; and the third color scheme was the usual black-and-white programs. This study showed that subjects who used programs with Color-scheme-B had the highest mean score for program comprehension, followed by those who used Color-scheme-A. Subjects who used black-and-white programs scored the lowest on the comprehension quiz.

References

[1]

Bohl, M. Flowchartinq Techniques. Scientific Research Associates, Chicago, 1971.

Google Scholar

[2]

Boysen, J. and Keller, R. "Measuring Computer Program Comprehension". ACM SIGCSE Bulletin 12, 1 (Feb. 1980), 92-102.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[3]

Clifton, M.H. "A Technique for Making Structured Programs more Readable". ACM SIGPLAN Notices 13, 4 (April 1978), 58-63.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[4]

Gimpel, J.F. "Contour, A Method of Preparing Structured Flowcharts". ACM SIGPLAN Notices 15, I0 (Oct. 1980), 35-41.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[5]

Grogono, P. P_~rosramming in Pascal. Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, Inc., Reading, MA, 1978, 186-188.

Google Scholar

[6]

Hue r as, J. and Ledg a rd, H. "An Automatic Formatting Program for Pascal". ACM SIGPLAN Notices 12, 7 (July 1977-~,- 82-84.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[7]

Leinbaugh, D.W. "Indenting for the Compiler". ACM SIGPLAN Notices 15, 5 (May 1980), 41-48.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[8]

Love, T. "An Experimental Investigation of the Effect of Program Structure on Program Understanding" Proc. ACM Conference o nn Languag@ ~ fo___{r Reliable Software. March 1977, 105- 113.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[9]

Miara, R. et al. "Program Indentation and Comprehensibility". Communications of the ACM 15, ii (Nov. 1983), 861-867.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[10]

Novcia, A.F. "Indentation Documentation and Programmer Comprehension". Proc. of Human Factors in Computer Systems_ ACM Washington, D.C. 1981, I{~c- l-f0q

Google Scholar

[11]

Ramsdell, J. "Pretty Printing Structured Programs with Connector Lines". ACM SIGPLAN Notices 14, 9 (Sept. 1979), 74-75.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[12]

Shneiderman, B. and McKay, D. "Experimental Investigations of Computer Program Debugging and Modification". Proc. 6th International Consress of the International E_r~onomics Association. July 1976, College Park, MD.

Google Scholar

[13]

Shneiderman, B. et al. "Experimental Investigations of the Utility of Detailed Flowcharts in Programming", Communications of the ACM 20, 6 (June

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[14]

Weissman, L.M. "Psychological Complexity of Computer Programs: An Experimental Methodology" ACM SIGPLAN Notices 15, 6 (June 1974),

Digital Library

Google Scholar

Cited By

View all

Dantas CRocha AMaia M(2023)How do Developers Improve Code Readability? An Empirical Study of Pull Requests2023 IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution (ICSME)10.1109/ICSME58846.2023.00022(110-122)Online publication date: 1-Oct-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/ICSME58846.2023.00022
Kölling MMcKay F(2016)Heuristic Evaluation for Novice Programming SystemsACM Transactions on Computing Education10.1145/287252116:3(1-30)Online publication date: 8-Jun-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2872521
Malchow JMarzin DKlick JKovacs RRoth V(2015)PLC Guard: A practical defense against attacks on cyber-physical systems2015 IEEE Conference on Communications and Network Security (CNS)10.1109/CNS.2015.7346843(326-334)Online publication date: Sep-2015
https://doi.org/10.1109/CNS.2015.7346843
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Recommendations

The influence of color on program readability and comprehensibility
SIGCSE '86: Proceedings of the seventeenth SIGCSE technical symposium on Computer science education

Readability and comprehensibility are among the most important attributes of a program. A program that is easy to read and understand is easier to test, maintain, and modify. Many factors affect program readability and comprehensibility, including ...
e-book readability, comprehensibility and satisfaction
ICUIMC '11: Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Ubiquitous Information Management and Communication

The style of text, including number of columns, line spacing, typeface, and font-size, may affect e-book readers' understanding, readability and satisfaction. Along with the recent appearances of e-book devices such as Amazon's Kindle, Apple iBooks, and ...
Skin color enhancement based on favorite skin color in HSV color space

Skin color enhancement based on favorite skin color is proposed to make skin color displayed on large screen flat panel TVs agree with human favorite skin color. A robust skin detection method in different intensity is obtained after analyzing the ...

Reviews

Reviewer: Lee Girard Herberts

This paper investigates the readability and comprehensibility of traditional (i.e., black and white) versus color-coded (colored statements, structures) programs. The most readable programs were those color-coded by statement type (e.g., blue procedure calls, red functions). Although the research topic has a small scope, there are implications for improving programmer productivity (using colored CRTs and printout). The research is well executed and given a good presentation.

Access critical reviews of Computing literature here

Become a reviewer for Computing Reviews.

Comments

Please enable JavaScript to view thecomments powered by Disqus.

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

ACM SIGCSE Bulletin Volume 18, Issue 1

Proceedings of the 17th SIGCSE symposium on Computer science education

February 1986

304 pages

ISSN:0097-8418

DOI:10.1145/953055

Issue’s Table of Contents

SIGCSE '86: Proceedings of the seventeenth SIGCSE technical symposium on Computer science education
February 1986
336 pages
ISBN:0897911784
DOI:10.1145/5600
Editors:
Joyce Currie Little
Towson State Univ., Baltimore, MD
,
Lillian N. Cassel
Univ. of Delaware, Newark

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 01 February 1986

Published in SIGCSE Volume 18, Issue 1

Check for updates

Qualifiers

Article

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

14
Total Citations
View Citations
832
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)146
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)36

Reflects downloads up to 23 Jan 2025

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

View all

Dantas CRocha AMaia M(2023)How do Developers Improve Code Readability? An Empirical Study of Pull Requests2023 IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution (ICSME)10.1109/ICSME58846.2023.00022(110-122)Online publication date: 1-Oct-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/ICSME58846.2023.00022
Kölling MMcKay F(2016)Heuristic Evaluation for Novice Programming SystemsACM Transactions on Computing Education10.1145/287252116:3(1-30)Online publication date: 8-Jun-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2872521
Malchow JMarzin DKlick JKovacs RRoth V(2015)PLC Guard: A practical defense against attacks on cyber-physical systems2015 IEEE Conference on Communications and Network Security (CNS)10.1109/CNS.2015.7346843(326-334)Online publication date: Sep-2015
https://doi.org/10.1109/CNS.2015.7346843
Zhuang YYan YDeLong LYeh M(2024)Do developer perceptions have borders? Comparing C code responses across continentsSoftware Quality Journal10.1007/s11219-023-09654-032:2(431-457)Online publication date: 1-Jun-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/s11219-023-09654-0
Wyrich MBogner JWagner S(2023)40 Years of Designing Code Comprehension Experiments: A Systematic Mapping StudyACM Computing Surveys10.1145/362652256:4(1-42)Online publication date: 9-Nov-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3626522
Dantas CRocha AMaia M(2023)How do Developers Improve Code Readability? An Empirical Study of Pull Requests2023 IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution (ICSME)10.1109/ICSME58846.2023.00022(110-122)Online publication date: 1-Oct-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/ICSME58846.2023.00022
Sellitto GIannone ECodabux ZLenarduzzi VDe Lucia APalomba FFerrucci F(2022)Toward Understanding the Impact of Refactoring on Program Comprehension2022 IEEE International Conference on Software Analysis, Evolution and Reengineering (SANER)10.1109/SANER53432.2022.00090(731-742)Online publication date: Mar-2022
https://doi.org/10.1109/SANER53432.2022.00090
Hannebauer CHesenius MGruhn V(2018)Does syntax highlighting help programming novices?Empirical Software Engineering10.1007/s10664-017-9579-023:5(2795-2828)Online publication date: 1-Oct-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/s10664-017-9579-0
Feigenspan JKästner CApel SLiebig JSchulze MDachselt RPapendieck MLeich TSaake G(2018)Do background colors improve program comprehension in the #ifdef hell?Empirical Software Engineering10.1007/s10664-012-9208-x18:4(699-745)Online publication date: 26-Dec-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/s10664-012-9208-x
Kölling MMcKay F(2016)Heuristic Evaluation for Novice Programming SystemsACM Transactions on Computing Education10.1145/287252116:3(1-30)Online publication date: 8-Jun-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2872521
Show More Cited By

View Options

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

PDF

eReader

View online with eReader.

eReader

Login options

Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

Abstract

References

Cited By

Index Terms

Recommendations