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Due to the growing complexity of software systems, there has been a dramatic increase and industry demand for tools and techniques on software refactoring in the last ten years, defined traditionally as a set of program transformations…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2020-07-07 Chaima Abid , Vahid Alizadeh , Marouane Kessentini , Thiago do Nascimento Ferreira , Danny Dig

Motivation: Code understandability is crucial in software development, as developers spend 58% to 70% of their time reading source code. Improving it can improve productivity and reduce maintenance costs. Problem: Experimental studies often…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2024-11-13 Delano Oliveira , Reydne Santos , Benedito de Oliveira , Martin Monperrus , Fernando Castor , Fernanda Madeiral

In this work, we developed an algorithm for detecting code quality issues in the templates of online programming tasks, validated it, and conducted an empirical study on the dataset of student solutions. The algorithm consists of analyzing…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2023-04-26 Anastasiia Birillo , Elizaveta Artser , Yaroslav Golubev , Maria Tigina , Hieke Keuning , Nikolay Vyahhi , Timofey Bryksin

Refactoring is a practice widely adopted during software maintenance and evolution. Due to its importance, there is extensive work on the effectiveness of refactoring in achieving code quality. However, developer's intentions are usually…

Developers often refactor code to improve the maintainability and comprehension of the software. There are many studies on refactoring activities in traditional software systems. However, refactoring in data-intensive systems is not well…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2022-02-08 Biruk Asmare Muse , Foutse Khomh , Giuliano Antoniol

Software systems are evolving by adding new functions and modifying existing functions over time. Through the evolution, the structure of software is becoming more complex and so the understandability and maintainability of software systems…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2014-08-22 Ginika Mahajan , Ashima

Large language model (LLM) coding agents can generate working code, but their solutions often accumulate complexity, duplication, and architectural debt. Human developers address such issues through refactoring: behavior-preserving program…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2026-03-05 Alex Thillen , Niels Mündler , Veselin Raychev , Martin Vechev

This research paper aims to find, analyze and understand code patterns in any software system and measure its quality by defining standards and proposing a formula for the same. Every code that is written can be divided into different code…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2011-07-01 Jitesh Dundas

Reading code is an essential activity in software maintenance and evolution. Several studies with human subjects have investigated how different factors, such as the employed programming constructs and naming conventions, can impact code…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2021-10-05 Delano Oliveira , Reydne Bruno , Fernanda Madeiral , Fernando Castor

Cognitive-Driven Development (CDD) is a coding design technique that aims to reduce the cognitive effort that developers place in understanding a given code unit (e.g., a class). By following CDD design practices, it is expected that the…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2022-06-23 Leonardo Barbosa , Victor Hugo Santiago , Alberto Luiz Oliveira Tavares de Souza , Gustavo Pinto

Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly used for automated code refactoring tasks. Although these models can quickly refactor code, the quality may exhibit inconsistencies and unpredictable behavior. In this article, we systematically…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2026-02-26 Norman Peitek , Julia Hess , Sven Apel

Software refactoring plays an important role in software engineering. Developers often turn to refactoring when they want to restructure software to improve its quality without changing its external behavior. Studies show that small-scale…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2022-02-16 James Ivers , Robert L. Nord , Ipek Ozkaya , Chris Seifried , Christopher S. Timperley , Marouane Kessentini

Many software systems originate as prototypes or minimum viable products (MVPs), developed with an emphasis on delivery speed and responsiveness to changing requirements rather than long-term code maintainability. While effective for rapid…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2026-04-06 Ema Smolic , Mario Brcic , Luka Hobor , Mihael Kovac

Background: Test-driven development (TDD) is a technique that repeats short coding cycles interleaved with testing. The developer first writes a unit test for the desired functionality, followed by the necessary production code, and…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2016-11-21 Davide Fucci , Hakan Erdogmus , Burak Turhan , Markku Oivo , Natalia Juristo

Code review is a well-established and valued practice in the software engineering community contributing to both code quality and interpersonal benefits. However, there are challenges in both tools and processes that give rise to…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2025-07-15 Lo Gullstrand Heander , Emma Söderberg , Christofer Rydenfält

Background: Noise, defined as an unwanted sound, is one of the commonest factors that could affect people's performance in their daily work activities. The software engineering research community has marginally investigated the effects of…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2018-07-12 Simone Romano , Giuseppe Scanniello , Davide Fucci , Natalia Juristo , Burak Turhan

Context: In the realm of software development, maintaining high software quality is a persistent challenge. However, this challenge is often impeded by the lack of comprehensive understanding of how specific code modifications influence…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2024-04-08 Thomas Karanikiotis , Andreas L. Symeonidis

In modern software engineering, build systems play the crucial role of facilitating the conversion of source code into software artifacts. Recent research has explored high-level causes of build failures, but has largely overlooked the…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2025-04-03 Anwar Ghammam , Dhia Elhaq Rzig , Mohamed Almukhtar , Rania Khalsi , Foyzul Hassan , Marouane Kessentini

As an integral part of source code files, code comments help improve program readability and comprehension. However, developers sometimes do not comment on their program code adequately due to the incurred extra efforts, lack of relevant…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2019-07-31 Xiaotao Song , Hailong Sun , Xu Wang , Jiafei Yan

Refactoring is a critical process in software development, aiming at improving the internal structure of code while preserving its external behavior. Refactoring engines are integral components of modern Integrated Development Environments…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2024-09-24 Haibo Wang , Zhuolin Xu , Huaien Zhang , Nikolaos Tsantalis , Shin Hwei Tan