Overcoming Language Dichotomies: Toward Effective Program Comprehension for Mobile App Development

TL;DR

This paper discusses the unique challenges in understanding mobile app code caused by different program representations, identifies key language dichotomies, and proposes future research directions to improve mobile software development.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive analysis of language dichotomies in mobile app development and offers a research roadmap to address these comprehension challenges.

Findings

Identification of key language dichotomies affecting comprehension

Analysis of how these dichotomies hinder mobile app development

Proposed directions for future research to overcome these challenges

Abstract

Mobile devices and platforms have become an established target for modern software developers due to performant hardware and a large and growing user base numbering in the billions. Despite their popularity, the software development process for mobile apps comes with a set of unique, domain-specific challenges rooted in program comprehension. Many of these challenges stem from developer difficulties in reasoning about different representations of a program, a phenomenon we define as a "language dichotomy". In this paper, we reflect upon the various language dichotomies that contribute to open problems in program comprehension and development for mobile apps. Furthermore, to help guide the research community towards effective solutions for these problems, we provide a roadmap of directions for future work.