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Open-ended programming increases students' motivation by allowing them to solve authentic problems and connect programming to their own interests. However, such open-ended projects are also challenging, as they often encourage students to…

As part of formative and summative assessments in programming courses, students work on developing programming artifacts following a given specification. These artifacts are evaluated by the teachers. At the end of this evaluation, the…

Context: Software systems are in continuous evolution through source code changes to fixing bugs, adding new functionalities and improving the internal architecture. All these practices are recorded in the version history, which can be…

As programmers write code, they often edit and retry multiple times, creating rich "interaction traces" that reveal how they approach coding tasks and provide clues about their level of skill development. For novice programmers in…

Novice programmers face numerous barriers while attempting to learn how to code that may deter them from pursuing a computer science degree or career in software development. In this work, we propose a tool concept to address the…

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…

AI code generators like OpenAI Codex have the potential to assist novice programmers by generating code from natural language descriptions, however, over-reliance might negatively impact learning and retention. To explore the implications…

For a novice programmer, coding is equivalent to a nightmare. A novice programmer tries to replicate steps provided by the faculty and on compilation gets a number of errors which the novice programmer is not able to resolve. This system…

One common task of developing or maintaining software is searching the source code for information like specific method calls or write accesses to certain fields. This kind of information is required to correctly implement new features and…

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…

A concern can be characterized as a developer's intent behind a piece of code, often not explicitly captured in it. We discuss a technique of recording concerns using source code annotations (concern annotations). Using two studies and two…

The immense amounts of source code provide ample challenges and opportunities during software development. To handle the size of code bases, developers commonly search for code, e.g., when trying to find where a particular feature is…

Scientists across disciplines write code for critical activities like data collection and generation, statistical modeling, and visualization. As large language models that can generate code have become widely available, scientists may…

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…

This paper presents data analysis from a course on Software Engineering in an effort to identify metrics and techniques that would allow instructor to act proactively and identify patterns of low engagement and inefficient peer…

Improved software discovery is a prerequisite for greater software reuse: after all, if someone cannot find software for a particular task, they cannot reuse it. Understanding people's approaches and preferences when they look for software…

To evaluate how developers perform differently in solving programming tasks, i.e., which actions and behaviours are more beneficial to them than others and if there are any specific strategies and behaviours that may indicate good versus…

Newcomers to a software project must overcome many barriers before they can successfully place their first code contribution, and they often struggle to find information that is relevant to them. In this work, we argue that much of the…

Understanding collaboration patterns in introductory programming courses is essential, as teamwork is a critical skill in computer science. In professional environments, software development relies on effective teamwork, navigating diverse…

Recruiting professional programmers in sufficient numbers for research studies can be challenging because they often cannot spare the time, or due to their geographical distribution and potentially the cost involved. Online platforms such…