Related papers: PLOS/Mozilla Scientific Code Review Pilot: Summary…
Context: Code review has long been a core practice in collaborative software engineering. As automation becomes increasingly embedded in development workflows, the role and functioning of code review are subject to change. Objective: This…
Software bots, extensively adopted by Open Source Software (OSS) projects, support developers across several activities, from automating predefined tasks to generating code that aids software engineers. However, with the growing prominence…
Background: Recent advancements in large language models have motivated the practical use of such models in code generation and program synthesis. However, little is known about the effects of such tools on code readability and visual…
Lay summarisation aims to jointly summarise and simplify a given text, thus making its content more comprehensible to non-experts. Automatic approaches for lay summarisation can provide significant value in broadening access to scientific…
Code review that detects and locates defects and other quality issues plays an important role in software quality control. One type of issue that may impact the quality of software is code smells. Yet, little is known about the extent to…
In recent years, the research community has raised serious questions about the reproducibility of scientific work. In particular, since many studies include some kind of computing work, reproducibility is also a technological challenge, not…
The increasing use of large language model (LLM)-powered code generation tools, such as GitHub Copilot, is transforming software engineering practices. This paper investigates how developers validate and repair code generated by Copilot and…
Usability is an increasing concern in open source software (OSS). Given the recent changes in the OSS landscape, it is imperative to examine the OSS contributors' current valued factors, practices, and challenges concerning usability. We…
Phabricator is a modern code collaboration tool used by popular projects like FreeBSD and Mozilla. However, unlike the other well-known code review environments, such as Gerrit or GitHub, there is no readily accessible public code review…
With the advent of open source software, a veritable treasure trove of previously proprietary software development data was made available. This opened the field of empirical software engineering research to anyone in academia. Data that is…
In computer science, students could benefit from more opportunities to learn important, high-level concepts and to improve their learning skills. Peer review is one method to encourage this by providing students with the opportunity to…
Background: Research software plays an important role in solving real-life problems, empowering scientific innovations, and handling emergency situations. Therefore, the correctness and trustworthiness of research software are of absolute…
Context: Software testing plays an essential role in product quality improvement. For this reason, several software testing models have been developed to support organizations. However, adoption of testing process models inside…
Understanding program code is a complicated endeavor. As such, myriad different factors can influence the outcome. Investigations of program comprehension, and in particular those using controlled experiments, have to take these factors…
The reproduction and replication of research results has become a major issue for a number of scientific disciplines. In computer science and related computational disciplines such as systems biology, the challenges closely revolve around…
Computational scientists are facing a new era where the old ways of developing and reusing code have to be left behind and a few daring steps are to be made towards new horizons. The present work analyzes the needs that drive this change,…
In the era of revolution, the development of softwares are increasing daily. The quality of software impacts the most in software development. To ensure the quality of the software it needs to be reviewed and updated. The effectiveness of…
The authors present the results of a simple usability test performed on line_explorer, an innovative tool aimed at letting students explore programming. The system offers an interactive environment where students can learn, review, and…
Developer turnover is inevitable on software projects and leads to knowledge loss, a reduction in productivity, and an increase in defects. Mitigation strategies to deal with turnover tend to disrupt and increase workloads for developers.…
Writing complex computer programs to study scientific problems requires careful planning and an in-depth knowledge of programming languages and tools. In this chapter the importance of using the right tool for the right problem is…