Related papers: How are We Detecting Inconsistent Method Names? An…
Despite great advances in program synthesis techniques, they remain algorithmic black boxes. Although they guarantee that when synthesis is successful, the implementation satisfies the specification, they provide no additional information…
Similarity measures are fundamental tools for quantifying the alignment between artificial and biological systems. However, the diversity of similarity measures and their varied naming and implementation conventions makes it challenging to…
The notion of refinement plays an important role in software engineering. It is the basis of a stepwise development methodology in which the correctness of a system can be established by proving, or computing, that a system refines its…
Comparison studies in methodological research are intended to compare methods in an evidence-based manner to help data analysts select a suitable method for their application. To provide trustworthy evidence, they must be carefully…
Automated Program Repair (APR) techniques have shown more and more promising results in fixing real-world bugs. Despite the effectiveness, APR techniques still face an overfitting problem: a generated patch can be incorrect although it…
Large Language Models (LLMs) changed the way we design and interact with software systems. Their ability to process and extract information from text has drastically improved productivity in a number of routine tasks. Developers that want…
Code Smell, similar to a bad smell, is a surface indication of something tainted but in terms of software writing practices. This metric is an indication of a deeper problem lies within the code and is associated with an issue which is…
Test smells, similar to code smells, can negatively impact both the test code and the production code being tested. Despite extensive research on test smells in languages like Java, Scala, and Python, automated tools for detecting test…
How should we quantify the inconsistency of a database that violates integrity constraints? Proper measures are important for various tasks, such as progress indication and action prioritization in cleaning systems, and reliability…
Software refactoring is the process of changing the structure of software without any alteration in its behavior and functionality. Presuming it is carried out in appropriate opportunities, refactoring enhances software quality…
Software system can include redundant implementation elements, such as, different methods that can produce indistinguishable results. This type of redundancy is called intrinsic if it is already available in the software, although not…
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…
Similarly to production code, code smells also occur in test code, where they are called test smells. Test smells have a detrimental effect not only on test code but also on the production code that is being tested. To date, the majority of…
Change-based code review is used widely in industrial software development. Thus, research on tools that help the reviewer to achieve better review performance can have a high impact. We analyze one possibility to provide cognitive support…
LLMs show strong performance in code generation, but their outputs lack correctness guarantees. Sample-based uncertainty estimators address this by generating multiple candidate programs and measuring their disagreement. However, existing…
Code review is considered a key process in the software industry for minimizing bugs and improving code quality. Inspection of review process effectiveness and continuous improvement can boost development productivity. Such inspection is a…
Background. Refactoring is a critical task in software maintenance and is generally performed to enforce the best design and implementation practices or to cope with design defects. Several studies attempted to detect refactoring activities…
Background: Research software is software developed by and/or used by researchers, across a wide variety of domains, to perform their research. Because of the complexity of research software, developers cannot conduct exhaustive testing. As…
Software repositories are an essential source of information for software engineering research on topics such as project evolution and developer collaboration. Appropriate mining tools and analysis pipelines are therefore an indispensable…
The problem of writing a specification which accurately reflects the intent of the developer has long been recognized as fundamental. We propose a method and a supporting tool to write and check a specification and an implementation using a…