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Energy consumption of mobile apps is a domain that is receiving a lot of attention from researchers. Recent studies indicate that the energy consumption of mobile devices could be improved by improving the quality of mobile apps. Frequent…

(Source) code search is widely concerned by software engineering researchers because it can improve the productivity and quality of software development. Given a functionality requirement usually described in a natural language sentence, a…

Background: Many published machine learning studies are irreproducible. Issues with methodology and not properly accounting for variation introduced by the algorithm themselves or their implementations are attributed as the main…

Modern Code Review (MCR) is a standard in all kinds of organizations that develop software. MCR pays for itself through perceived and proven benefits in quality assurance and knowledge transfer. However, the time invest in MCR is generally…

Large Language Models (LLMs) have achieved remarkable success in tasks requiring complex reasoning, such as code generation, mathematical problem solving, and algorithmic synthesis -- especially when aided by reasoning tokens and…

Code Review consists in assessing the code written by teammates with the goal of increasing code quality. Empirical studies documented the benefits brought by such a practice that, however, has its cost to pay in terms of developers' time.…

Code generation, the task of creating executable programs from natural language requirements, has recently seen tremendous advances through Chain-of-Thought (CoT) reasoning, which enables Large Language Models (LLMs) to develop high-level…

Static analysis tools are frequently used to scan the source code and detect deviations from the project coding guidelines. Given their importance, linters are often introduced to classrooms to educate students on how to detect and…

Code generation aims to automatically generate source code from high-level task specifications, which can significantly increase productivity of software engineering. Recently, approaches based on large language models (LLMs) have shown…

Software architecture students, often, lack self-confidence in their ability to use their knowledge to design software architectures. This paper investigates the relations between undergraduate software architecture students'…

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…

Creating functions is at the center of writing computer programs. But there has been little empirical research on how this is done and what are the considerations that developers use. We design an experiment in which we can compare the…

Many software analysis methods have come to rely on machine learning approaches. Code segmentation - the process of decomposing source code into meaningful blocks - can augment these methods by featurizing code, reducing noise, and limiting…

Recent advances in large language models (LLMs) have introduced new paradigms in software development, including vibe coding, AI-assisted coding, and agentic coding, fundamentally reshaping how software is designed, implemented, and…

Code has become a standard component of modern foundation language model (LM) training, yet its role beyond programming remains unclear. We revisit the claim that code improves reasoning through controlled pretraining experiments on a…

Computer programming represents a rapidly evolving and sought-after career path in the 21st century. Nevertheless, novice learners may find the process intimidating for several reasons, such as limited and highly competitive career…

Programming courses can be challenging for first year university students, especially for those without prior coding experience. Students initially struggle with code syntax, but as more advanced topics are introduced across a semester, the…

Software engineering is a highly dynamic discipline. Hence, as times change, so too might our beliefs about core processes in this field. This paper checks some five beliefs that originated in the past decades that comment on the…

AI code generation tools have gained significant popularity among developers, who use them to assist in software development due to their capability to generate code. Existing studies mainly explored the quality, e.g., correctness and…

Code data has been shown to enhance the reasoning capabilities of large language models (LLMs), but it remains unclear which aspects of code are most responsible. We investigate this question with a systematic, data-centric framework. We…