Related papers: Edit-Run Behavior in Programming and Debugging

This paper introduces a Theory of Troubleshooting that is rooted in cognitive science. This theory helps software developers explain the challenges they face and the project risks that emerge as troubleshooting becomes difficult. We define…

Recently, we can notice a transition to data-driven techniques in Automated Program Repair (APR), in particular towards deep neural networks. This entails training on hundreds of thousands or even millions of non-executable code fragments.…

Software refactoring plays an important role in software engineering. Developers often turn to refactoring when they want to restructure software to improve its quality without changing its external behavior. Studies show that small-scale…

Background: Some developer activity traditionally performed manually, such as making code commits, opening, managing, or closing issues is increasingly subject to automation in many OSS projects. Specifically, such activity is often…

Automated debugging, long pursued in a variety of fields from software engineering to cybersecurity, requires a framework that offers the building blocks for a programmable debugging workflow. However, existing debuggers are primarily…

Deep learning model design, development, and debugging is a process driven by best practices, guidelines, trial-and-error, and the personal experiences of model developers. At multiple stages of this process, performance and internal model…

There are two ways to check if a program is correct, namely execute it or review it. While executing a program is the ultimate test for its correctness reviewing the program can occur earlier in its development and find problems if done…

Large language models (LLMs) have shown significant advancements in code generation, but still face challenges on tasks beyond their basic capabilities. Recently, the notion of self-debugging has been proposed to boost the performance of…

Peer review is a key activity intended to preserve the quality and integrity of scientific publications. However, in practice it is far from perfect. We aim at understanding how reviewers, including those who have won awards for reviewing,…

Modern code review is a widely used technique employed in both industrial and open-source projects to improve software quality, share knowledge, and ensure adherence to coding standards and guidelines. During code review, developers may…

Context: Writing Clean Code understandable by other collaborators has become crucial to enhancing collaboration and productivity. However, very little is known regarding whether developers agree with Clean Code Principles and how they apply…

As software projects are very diverse, each software development process must be adjusted to the needs of the project and the corresponding development team. Frequently, we find different methods and practices combined in a so-called hybrid…

Software engineering is not an empirically based discipline. Consequently, many of its practices are based on little more than a generally agreed feeling that something may be true. Part of the problem is that it is both relatively young…

Developers often use crash reports to understand the root cause of bugs. However, locating the buggy source code snippet from such information is a challenging task, mainly when the log database contains many crash reports. To mitigate this…

Open-source developers, particularly the elite developers, maintain a diverse portfolio of contributing activities. They do not only commit source code but also spend a significant amount of effort on other communicative, organizational,…

Many practitioners and academics believe in a delayed issue effect (DIE); i.e. the longer an issue lingers in the system, the more effort it requires to resolve. This belief is often used to justify major investments in new development…

Complex software systems evolve frequently, e.g., when introducing new features or fixing bugs during maintenance. However, understanding the impact of such changes on system behavior is often difficult. Many approaches have thus been…

Context: Deep learning has achieved remarkable progress in various domains. However, like any software system, deep learning systems contain bugs, some of which can have severe impacts, as evidenced by crashes involving autonomous vehicles.…

This study investigates the implementation and efficacy of DeputyDev, an AI-powered code review assistant developed to address inefficiencies in the software development process. The process of code review is highly inefficient for several…

The availability of debug information for optimized executables can largely ease crucial tasks such as crash analysis. Source-level debuggers use this information to display program state in terms of source code, allowing users to reason on…