- Two basic program comprehension approaches
- Prevenient
- The program understanding is written as a forethought
before, during, or after the development of the source program
- Posterior
- The program understanding is extracted from the source program by means of special reverse engineering tools
| | Here we want to make a distinction which represents when the program comprehension is dealt with relative
to the time where it is actually needed. The prevenient approach represent the cases in which some documentation is explicitly written before
it is needed. The posterior approach, on the other hand, represent the cases in which the
comprehension is attempted to be extracted from the program, when it is needed typically in a late phases of the
program life time. |