The Effect of Comments on Program Comprehension: An Eye-tracking Study

Abstract Programmers rely on code documentation and comments to understand source code, with program comprehension tasks consuming a significant portion of development time. Despite their importance, the impact of comments on program comprehension remains debated. Our study addresses this gap by investigating the influence of comments on program comprehension. Employing a mixed-methods approach, we conducted an eye-tracking study involving 20 computer science students to explore the influence of