Source Code Readability : A study on type-declaration and programming knowledge

The readability of source code is essential for software maintenance. Since maintenance is an ongoing process, which is estimated to be 70 percent of the software development life cycle's total costs, it cannot be deprioritized. The readability of source code is likely to affect the program comprehension, which may help or create problems in the maintenance of the software. How different code features and functions affect the readability of source code have previously been investigated, and readability metrics have been developed. The project was initiated because of the lack of research on how programming knowledge and statically compared to dynamically typed programming languages affect the readability of the source code. A survey was conducted and included 21 computer science students with various programming knowledge, each rating eight code snippets, making it in total 168 ratings. The results showed that the type of programming language could improve the readability of source code. The results also showed that programming knowledge does not have a correlation with the ability to read source code