Related papers: Making Python Code Idiomatic by Automatic Refactor…

Block-based programming languages like Scratch have become increasingly popular as introductory languages for novices. These languages are intended to be used with a "tinkering" approach which allows learners and teachers to quickly…

Python type inference is challenging in practice. Due to its dynamic properties and extensive dependencies on third-party libraries without type annotations, the performance of traditional static analysis techniques is limited. Although…

Artificial Intelligence (AI) models have emerged as another important audience for programming languages alongside humans and machines, as we enter the era of large language models (LLMs). LLMs can now perform well in coding competitions…

Programmers may be hesitant to use declarative systems, because of the associated learning curve. In this paper, we present an API that integrates the IDP Knowledge Base system into the Python programming language. IDP is a state-of-the-art…

In today's world, the focus of programmers has shifted from writing complex, error-prone code to prioritizing simple, clear, efficient, and sustainable code that makes programs easier to understand. Code refactoring plays a critical role in…

Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly used for automated code refactoring tasks. Although these models can quickly refactor code, the quality may exhibit inconsistencies and unpredictable behavior. In this article, we systematically…

We present pytest-inline, the first inline testing framework for Python. We recently proposed inline tests to make it easier to test individual program statements. But, there is no framework-level support for developers to write inline…

Complex software can be hard to read, adapt, and maintain. Refactoring it can create cleaner and self-explanatory code. Refactoring tools try to guide developers towards better code, with more quality. However, most of them take too long to…

Automated source code refactoring, particularly extract method refactoring, is a crucial and frequently employed technique during software development. Despite its importance and frequent use by practitioners, current automated techniques…

Unit tests are widely used to check source code quality, but they can be too coarse-grained or ill-suited for testing individual program statements. We introduce inline tests to make it easier to check for faults in statements. We motivate…

Idioms are figurative expressions whose meanings often cannot be inferred from their individual words, making them difficult to process computationally and posing challenges for human experimental studies. This survey reviews datasets…

In recent years, Jupyter notebooks have grown in popularity in several domains of software engineering, such as data science, machine learning, and computer science education. Their popularity has to do with their rich features for…

Python is very popular because it can be used for a wider audience of developers, data scientists, machine learning experts and so on. Like other programming languages, there are beginner to advanced levels of writing Python code. However,…

Widely used complex code refactoring tools lack a solid reasoning about the correctness of the transformations they implement, whilst interest in proven correct refactoring is ever increasing as only formal verification can provide true…

Programming languages and platforms improve over time, sometimes resulting in new language features that offer many benefits. However, despite these benefits, developers may not always be willing to adopt them in their projects for various…

Students often make mistakes on their introductory programming assignments as part of their learning process. Unfortunately, providing custom repairs for these mistakes can require a substantial amount of time and effort from class…

Tools for rewriting, refactoring and optimizing code should be fast and correct. Large language models (LLMs), by their nature, possess neither of these qualities. Yet, there remains tremendous opportunity in using LLMs to improve code. We…

Python is a popular dynamic language with a large part of its appeal coming from powerful libraries and extension modules. These augment the language and make it a productive environment for a wide variety of tasks, ranging from web…

Programming problems can be solved in a multitude of functionally correct ways, but the quality of these solutions (e.g. readability, maintainability) can vary immensely. When code quality is poor, symptoms emerge in the form of 'code…

We systematically study the quality of 4,066 ChatGPT-generated code implemented in two popular programming languages, i.e., Java and Python, for 2,033 programming tasks. The goal of this work is three folds. First, we analyze the…