Code Reviews in C++: Preliminary Results from an Eye Tracking Study

Code reviews are an essential part of quality assurance in modern software projects. But despite their great importance, they are still carried out in a way that relies on human skills and decisions. During the last decade, there have been several publications on code reviews using eye tracking as a method, but only a few studies have focused on the performance differences between experts and novices. To get a deeper understanding of these differences, the following experiment was developed: This study surveys expertise-related differences in experts’, advanced programmers’, and novices’ eye movements during the review of eight short C++ code examples, including correct and erroneous codes. A sample of 35 participants (21 novices, 14 advanced and expert programmers) were recruited. A Tobii Spectrum 600 was used for the data collection. Measures included participants’ eye movements during the code review, demographic background data, and cued retrospective verbal comments on replays of their own eye movement recordings. Preliminary results give proof for experience-related differences between participants. Advanced and expert programmers performed significantly better in case of error detection and the eye tracking data implies a more efficient reviewing strategy.