Métricas de legibilidad del código fuente: revisión sistemática de literatura

Resumen

La calidad del software es un aspecto ligado directamente a los costos futuros de mantenimiento y, generalmente, se cuantifica mediante métricas de calidad de los productos de software. Uno de los aspectos a tener en cuenta para evaluar la calidad del software es su mantenibilidad, ya que tiene un alto impacto sobre los costos totales de los proyectos de software. En particular, se estima que el 70% del tiempo de mantenimiento se destina a comprender el código, por lo que resulta importante poder medir la legibilidad de un fragmento de código fuente adecuadamente. La legibilidad se define como la facilidad con la que una persona puede leer y comprender un fragmento de código escrito por otra persona. Esta característica es crucial para facilitar la compresión del código durante las tareas de mantenimiento de software, por lo que resulta necesario poder medir la legibilidad del código fuente. Por lo tanto, a lo largo de los últimos años, los investigadores en el área han propuesto múltiples métricas para medir la legibilidad del código fuente. No obstante, sigue siendo un reto poder evaluar con precisión la legibilidad del código fuente de una forma ampliamente aceptada. Por ello, es indispensable dar continuidad a este tipo de investigaciones y, para esto, es necesario conocer los avances recientes. Este artículo presenta una síntesis y análisis de las métricas de legibilidad de código, mediante una revisión sistemática de literatura, mostrando una recopilación de las características y los métodos utilizados para su medición. Los resultados de este trabajo serán de utilidad para que los investigadores en el área puedan proponer nuevas métricas de legibilidad del código fuente.

Palabras clave

legibilidad de código, código fuente, calidad de software, mantenibilidad, métricas, ingeniería de software

Biografía del autor/a

Ingrid Sofía Echavarría-Flórez, M.Sc.

Roles: análisis formal, investigación, curaduría de datos, software, redacción – borrador original.

Felipe Restrepo-Calle, Ph. D.

Roles: conceptualización, metodología, supervisión, validación, redacción – revisión y edición.

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