Comprehending Test Code: An Empirical Study

Abstract

Developers spend a large portion of their time and effort on comprehending source code. While many studies have investigated how developers approach these comprehension tasks and what factors influence their success, less is known about how developers comprehend test code specifically, despite the undisputed importance of testing. In this paper, we report on the results of an empirical study with 44 developers to understand which factors influence developers when comprehending Java test code. We measured three dependent variables: The total time spent reading a test suite, the ability to identify the overall purpose of a test suite, and the ability to produce additional test cases to extend ..