Related papers: 40 Years of Designing Code Comprehension Experimen…
Programmers' mental models represent their knowledge and understanding of programs, programming concepts, and programming in general. They guide programmers' work and influence their task performance. Understanding mental models is…
Refactoring is widely recognized as one of the efficient techniques to manage technical debt and maintain a healthy software project through enforcing best design practices or coping with design defects. Previous refactoring surveys have…
Context: Web APIs are one of the most used ways to expose application functionality on the Web, and their understandability is important for efficiently using the provided resources. While many API design rules exist, empirical evidence for…
Refactoring is a maintenance activity that aims to improve design quality while preserving the behavior of a system. Several (semi)automated approaches have been proposed to support developers in this maintenance activity, based on the…
Machine Learning has been successfully applied in systems applications such as memory prefetching and caching, where learned models have been shown to outperform heuristics. However, the lack of understanding the inner workings of these…
Software developers and maintainers need to read and understand source programs and other software artifacts. The increase in size and complexity of software drastically affects several quality attributes, especially understandability and…
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: Software architecture is a knowledge-intensive field. One mechanism for storing architecture knowledge is the recognition and description of architectural patterns. Selecting architectural patterns is a challenging task for…
Context: Several studies investigated the impact of anti-patterns (i.e., "poor" solutions to recurring design problems) during maintenance activities and reported that anti-patterns significantly affect the developers' effort required to…
Despite the increasing interest in quantum computing, the aspect of development to achieve cost-effective and reliable quantum software applications has been slow. One barrier is the software engineering of quantum programs, which can be…
Effective debugging is a crucial aspect of software development, demanding problem-solving skills, expertise, and appropriate tools. Although previous research has studied expert developers' debugging strategies, the specific factors…
Over the past three decades, considerable effort has been devoted to the study of software architecture. A major portion of this effort has focused on the originally proposed view of four "C"s---components, connectors, configurations, and…
Exploration is crucial in the design process and is known for its essential role in fostering creativity and enhancing design outcomes. Within design teams, exploration evolves into co-exploration, a collaborative and dynamic practice that…
Software architecture is the foundation of a system's ability to achieve various quality attributes, including software performance. However, there lacks comprehensive and in-depth understanding of why and how software architecture and…
Nowadays, collaborative modeling performed by multiple stakeholders is gaining a growing interest in both academia and practice. However, it poses a set of research challenges, such as large and complex models management, support for…
Although visualization tools are widely available and accessible, not everyone knows the best practices and guidelines for creating accurate and honest visual representations of data. Numerous books and articles have been written to expose…
A systematic mapping protocol is a method for conducting a literature review in a rigorous and transparent way. It aims to provide an overview of the current state of research on a specific topic, identify gaps and opportunities, and guide…
The hard coding of input data or constants into spreadsheet formulas is widely recognised as poor spreadsheet model design. However, the importance of avoiding such practice appears to be underestimated perhaps in light of the lack of…
Almost no modern software system is written from scratch, and developers are required to effectively learn to use third-party libraries or software services. Thus, many practitioners and researchers have looked for ways to create effective…
Context: Developers spend most of their time comprehending source code during software development. Automatically assessing how readable and understandable source code is can provide various benefits in different tasks, such as task…