Related papers: Anchoring Code Understandability Evaluations Throu…
Code review is a widely-used practice in software development companies to identify defects. Hence, code review has been included in many software engineering curricula at universities worldwide. However, teaching code review is still a…
Previous works from research and industry have proposed a spatial representation of code in a canvas, arguing that a navigational code space confers developers the freedom to organise elements according to their understanding. By allowing…
Literature and intuition suggest that a developer's intelligence and personality have an impact on their performance in comprehending source code. Researchers made this suggestion in the past when discussing threats to validity of their…
Code comprehension has been recently investigated from physiological and cognitive perspectives through the use of medical imaging. Floyd et al (i.e., the original study) used fMRI to classify the type of comprehension tasks performed by…
Context: Various approaches aim to support program comprehension by automatically detecting algorithms in source code. However, no empirical evaluations of their helpfulness have been performed. Objective: To empirically evaluate how…
Motivation: Code understandability is crucial in software development, as developers spend 58% to 70% of their time reading source code. Improving it can improve productivity and reduce maintenance costs. Problem: Experimental studies often…
We asked students to explain the structure and execution of their small programs after they had submitted them to a programming exercise. These questions about learner's code (QLCs) were delivered at three occasions in an online and open…
AI-assisted development tools promise productivity gains and improved code quality, yet their adoption among developers remains inconsistent. Prior research suggests that professional expertise influences technology adoption, but its role…
We investigate how code obfuscation influences human understanding of programs through an output-prediction task. To study this effect, we construct multiple levels of obfuscation, ranging from unobfuscated code to transformations involving…
This study examines how AI code assistants shape novice programmers experiences during a two-part exam in an introductory programming course. In the first part, students completed a programming task with access to AI support; in the second,…
AI coding assistants have become prolific in recent years. Through a longitudinal mixed-methods investigation, we examined how professional software engineers perceive the effects of AI coding assistants in regard to task focus, developer…
Interpretation of topics is crucial for their downstream applications. State-of-the-art evaluation measures of topic quality such as coherence and word intrusion do not measure how much a topic facilitates the exploration of a corpus. To…
Cognitive biases are predictable, systematic errors in human reasoning. They influence decision-making in various areas, including architectural decision-making, where architects face many choices. For example, anchoring can cause…
The arrival of AI coding assistants in educational settings presents a paradigm shift, introducing a "new kid in the classroom" for both students and instructors. Thus, understanding the perceptions of these key actors about this new…
Affects---emotions and moods---have an impact on cognitive processing activities and the working performance of individuals. It has been established that software development tasks are undertaken through cognitive processing activities.…
Various parameters affect the performance of students in online coding competitions. Students' behavior, approach, emotions, and problem difficulty levels significantly impact their performance in online coding competitions. We have…
Despite the popularity and importance of modern code review, the understanding of the cognitive processes that enable reviewers to analyze code and provide meaningful feedback is lacking. To address this gap, we observed and interviewed ten…
Understanding student perceptions of assessment is vital for designing inclusive and effective learning environments, especially in technical education. This study explores engineering students' perceptions of assessment practices in an…
Software engineering students often struggle to appreciate empirical methods and hypothesis-driven inquiry, especially when taught in theoretical terms. This experience report explores whether grounding empirical learning in hype-driven…
Identifying security issues early is encouraged to reduce the latent negative impacts on software systems. Code review is a widely-used method that allows developers to manually inspect modified code, catching security issues during a…