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Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) are pervasive in the current computer science landscape. Yet, there still exists a lack of software engineering experience and best practices in this field. One such best practice,…

Training a deep learning model on source code has gained significant traction recently. Since such models reason about vectors of numbers, source code needs to be converted to a code representation before vectorization. Numerous approaches…

Large Language Models (LLMs) are increasingly integrated into software systems for diverse purposes, due to their versatility, flexibility, and ability to simulate human reasoning to some extent. However, poor integration of LLM inference…

Large Language Models (LLMs), such as GitHub Copilot and ChatGPT have become popular among programming students. Students use LLMs to assist them in programming courses, including generating source code. Previous work has evaluated the…

As Deep learning (DL) systems continuously evolve and grow, assuring their quality becomes an important yet challenging task. Compared to non-DL systems, DL systems have more complex team compositions and heavier data dependency. These…

The Large Language Models (LLMs) have demonstrated great potential in code-related tasks. However, most research focuses on improving the output quality of LLMs (e.g., correctness), and less attention has been paid to the LLM input (e.g.,…

Robots are a popular platform for introducing computing and artificial intelligence to novice programmers. However, programming state-of-the-art robots is very challenging, and requires knowledge of concurrency, operation safety, and…

Solidity is the predominant programming language for blockchain-based smart contracts, and its characteristics pose significant challenges for code analysis and maintenance. Traditional software analysis approaches, while effective for…

Providing feedback on programming assignments manually is a tedious, error prone, and time-consuming task. In this paper, we motivate and address the problem of generating feedback on performance aspects in introductory programming…

Code smells are symptoms of poor design and implementation choices, which might hinder comprehension, increase code complexity and fault-proneness and decrease maintainability of software systems. The aim of our study was to perform a…

Novice programmers benefit from timely, personalized support that addresses individual learning gaps, yet the availability of instructors and teaching assistants is inherently limited. Large language models (LLMs) present opportunities to…

Large Language Models (LLMs) have gained massive popularity in recent years and are increasingly integrated into software systems for diverse purposes. However, poorly integrating them in source code may undermine software system quality.…

Teachers face several challenges when presenting the fundamental concepts of programming in the classroom. Several tools are introduced to give a visual dimension to support the learning process. These tools rely on code blocks, easily…

Code review plays an important role in software quality control. A typical review process would involve a careful check of a piece of code in an attempt to find defects and other quality issues/violations. One type of issues that may impact…

Large Language Models (LLMs) have recently been widely used for code generation. Due to the complexity and opacity of LLMs, little is known about how these models generate code. We made the first attempt to bridge this knowledge gap by…

Block-based environments such as Scratch are increasingly popular in programming education. While block syntax reduces surface errors, semantic bugs remain common and challenging for novices to resolve. Existing debugging workflows…

To broaden participation, competitive programming contests may include beginner-level problems that do not require knowledge of advanced Computer Science concepts (e.g., algorithms and data structures). However, since most participants have…

To prepare students for upcoming trends and challenges, it is important to teach them about the helpful and important aspects of modern technologies, such as robotics. However, classic study programs often fail to prepare students for…

Code smells are characteristics of the software that indicates a code or design problem which can make software hard to understand, evolve, and maintain. The code smell detection tools proposed in the literature produce different results,…

The interest in quantum computing is growing, and with it, the importance of software platforms to develop quantum programs. Ensuring the correctness of such platforms is important, and it requires a thorough understanding of the bugs they…