Related papers: Investigating the Readability of Test Code: Combin…
Code search engines usually use readability feature to rank code snippets. There are several metrics to calculate this feature, but developers may have different perceptions about readability. Correlation between readability and…
Static code analysis tools and integrated development environments present developers with quality-related software metrics, some of which describe the understandability of source code. Software metrics influence overarching strategic…
Flaky tests (tests with non-deterministic outcomes) pose a major challenge for software testing. They are known to cause significant issues such as reducing the effectiveness and efficiency of testing and delaying software releases. In…
Recent years have seen a sharp increase in the use of open source projects by common novice users; Open Source Software (OSS) is thus no longer a reserved arena for software developers and computer gurus. Although user-centered designs are…
As Large Language Models (LLMs) are transforming software development, the functional quality of generated code has become a central focus, leaving readability, one of critical non-functional attributes, understudied. Given that…
Reliability prediction is crucial for ensuring the safety and security of software systems, especially in the context of industry practices. While various metrics and measurements are employed to assess software reliability, the complexity…
Developers always wish to ensure that their latest changes to the code base do not break existing functionality. If test cases fail, they expect these failures to be connected to the submitted changes. Unfortunately, a flaky test can be the…
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…
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…
The relevance of code comprehension in a developer's daily work was recognized more than 40 years ago. Consequently, many experiments were conducted to find out how developers could be supported during code comprehension and which code…
Automatic readability assessment plays a key role in ensuring effective and accessible written communication. Despite significant progress, the field is hindered by inconsistent definitions of readability and measurements that rely on…
Be it in debugging, testing, code review or, more recently, pair programming with AI assistance: in all these activities, software engineers need to understand source code. Accordingly, plenty of research is taking place in the field to…
Developers spend 70% of their time understanding code. Code that is easy to read can save time, while hard-to-read code can lead to the introduction of bugs. However, it is difficult to establish what makes code more understandable.…
Understanding program code is a complicated endeavor. As such, myriad different factors can influence the outcome. Investigations of program comprehension, and in particular those using controlled experiments, have to take these factors…
Context: The rapid adoption of AI-assisted code generation tools, such as large language models (LLMs), is transforming software development practices. While these tools promise significant productivity gains, concerns regarding the…
The rapid rise of Large Language Models (LLMs) has changed software development, with tools like Copilot, JetBrains AI Assistant, and others boosting developers' productivity. However, developers now spend more time reviewing code than…
In this paper, we present a tertiary systematic literature review of previous surveys, secondary systematic literature reviews, and systematic mappings. We identify the main observations (what we know) and challenges (what we do not know)…
Reviewing source code from a security perspective has proven to be a difficult task. Indeed, previous research has shown that developers often miss even popular and easy-to-detect vulnerabilities during code review. Initial evidence…
Nowadays, software testing professionals are commonly required to develop coding skills to work on test automation. One essential skill required from those who code is the ability to implement code refactoring, a valued quality aspect of…
Software is infamous for its poor quality and frequent occurrence of bugs. While there is no doubt that thorough testing is an appropriate answer to ensure sufficient quality, the poor state of software generally suggests that developers…