Program understanding-does it offer hope for aging software?

Two questions are examined: what does it mean to understand a program? What solutions to the aging software crisis does program understanding offer? One view is that the aging software problem is a form of support for program maintenance. Another view is that the problem of applying program understanding techniques to aging software is one of both extending the life of existing relics, and mining them for valuable components. Yet another view is that domain specific cliches are necessary in program understanding and that program understanding support for software is how programmers can come to understand a program through cooperative interaction with a knowledge base. The work focuses on the flexibility provided by natural language interaction