Can You Improve My Code? Optimizing Programs with Local Search
Abstract
This paper introduces a local search method for improving an existing program with respect to a measurable objective. Program Optimization with Locally Improving Search (POLIS) exploits the structure of a program, defined by its lines. POLIS improves a single line of the program while keeping the remaining lines fixed, using existing brute-force synthesis algorithms, and continues iterating until it is unable to improve the program's performance. POLIS was evaluated with a 27-person user study, where participants wrote programs attempting to maximize the score of two single-agent games: Lunar Lander and Highway. POLIS was able to substantially improve the participants' programs with respect to the game scores. A proof-of-concept demonstration on existing Stack Overflow code measures applicability in real-world problems. These results suggest that POLIS could be used as a helpful programming assistant for programming problems with measurable objectives.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2307.05603,
title = {Can You Improve My Code? Optimizing Programs with Local Search},
author = {Fatemeh Abdollahi and Saqib Ameen and Matthew E. Taylor and Levi H. S. Lelis},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2307.05603},
year = {2023}
}
Comments
International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI) 2023