SAGE Publications, Human Factors, 4(27), p. 423-432
DOI: 10.1177/001872088502700406
Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - CHI '83
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This research explores the usefulness of control-flow versus interprocess communications information in documentation of concurrent processing programs. Programmer performance was examined on a modification task where modifications were made to either the data structure or the control flow of a program. The results suggest that for simple programs and simple modifications, it is not crucial whether interprocess communications or control-flow information is highlighted in the documentation format. For more complex problems, it would appear that detailed control-flow information is not necessary, and, in fact, may interfere with making the modification.