Choice of names impacts cost of debugging

Research Findings
What should you look for?
Industry Best Practice
Choice of names impacts cost of debugging

Research Finding:
The effort required to debug a program is minimized when variables had names averaging 10 to 16 characters long.

IfSQ Defect Indicators based on this finding:

SP-5—Poor Choice of Name
A name used in a program too short, too long, too cryptic, too similar to another name or inconsistent with other names

Source:

Cover of IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering

Debugging Effort Estimation using Software Metrics

Recorded 1990 in IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, SE-16, no. 2, February
Pages 233-31
N. Gorla, A.C. Benander, and B.A. Benander

Copyright © 2005, 2012 by IfSQ, Institute for Software Quality. All Rights Reserved.