Related papers: Latent Mutants: A large-scale study on the Interpl…

We present a comprehensive computational study of some 900 possible "lambda-lac" mutants of the lysogeny maintenance switch in phage lambda, of which up to date 19 have been studied experimentally (Atsumi & Little, PNAS 103: 4558-4563,…

One single code change can significantly influence a wide range of software systems and their users. For example, 1) adding a new feature can spread defects in several modules, while 2) changing an API method can improve the performance of…

Performance of text classification models tends to drop over time due to changes in data, which limits the lifetime of a pretrained model. Therefore an ability to predict a model's ability to persist over time can help design models that…

Evolution occurs in populations of reproducing individuals. In stochastic descriptions of evolutionary dynamics, such as the Moran process, individuals are chosen randomly for birth and for death. If the same type is chosen for both steps,…

Large language models (LLMs) achieve impressive abilities in numerous domains, but exhibit inconsistent performance in response to minor input changes. Rather than view this as a drawback, in this paper we introduce a novel method for…

Debugging is difficult. Recent studies show that automatic bug localization techniques have limited usefulness. One of the reasons is that programmers typically have to understand why the program fails before fixing it. In this work, we aim…

Computer modelling for evolutionary systems consists in: 1) to store in the memory the individual features of each member of a large population; and 2) to update the whole system repeatedly, as time goes by, according to some prescribed…

We evolve binary mux-6 trees for up to 100000 generations evolving some programs with more than a hundred million nodes. Our unbounded Long-Term Evolution Experiment LTEE GP appears not to evolve building blocks but does suggests a limit to…

We study the evolution and impact of bloated dependencies in a single software ecosystem: Java/Maven. Bloated dependencies are third-party libraries that are packaged in the application binary but are not needed to run the application. We…

Diversity has been proposed as a key criterion to improve testing effectiveness and efficiency.It can be used to optimise large test repositories but also to visualise test maintenance issues and raise practitioners' awareness about waste…

LLM (large language model) practitioners commonly notice that outputs can vary for the same inputs under settings expected to be deterministic. Yet the questions of how pervasive this is, and with what impact on results, have not to our…

Many researchers assume that, for software analytics, "more data is better." We write to show that, at least for learning defect predictors, this may not be true. To demonstrate this, we analyzed hundreds of popular GitHub projects. These…

Performance is a critical quality attribute in software development, yet the impact of method-level code changes on performance evolution remains poorly understood. While developers often make intuitive assumptions about which types of…

We study the fixation probability for two versions of the Moran process on the random graph $G_{n,p}$ at the threshold for connectivity. The Moran process models the spread of a mutant population in a network. Throughtout the process there…

When simulating biological populations under different evolutionary genetic models, backward or forward strategies can be followed. Backward simulations, also called coalescent-based simulations, are computationally very efficient. However,…

Code metamorphism refers to a computer programming exercise wherein the program modifies its own code (partial or entire) consistently and automatically while retaining its core functionality. This technique is often used for online…

In phylogenetic studies, the evolution of molecular sequences is assumed to have taken place along the phylogeny traced by the ancestors of extant species. In the presence of lateral gene transfer (LGT), however, this may not be the case,…

Automatically generated software, especially code produced by Large Language Models (LLMs), is increasingly adopted to accelerate development and reduce manual effort. However, little is known about the long-term reliability of such systems…

Large Language Models (LLMs) have shown tremendous promise in automated software engineering. In this paper, we investigate the opportunities of LLMs for automatic regression test generation for programs that take highly structured,…

Code completion, a highly valuable topic in the software development domain, has been increasingly promoted for use by recent advances in large language models (LLMs). To date, visible LLM-based code completion frameworks such as GitHub…