Related papers: An Empirical Study on the Impact of Code Duplicati…

Automated tests play an important role in software evolution because they can rapidly detect faults introduced during changes. In practice, code-coverage metrics are often used as criteria to evaluate the effectiveness of test suites with…

Despite the availability of refactoring as a feature in popular IDEs, recent studies revealed that developers are reluctant to use them, and still prefer the manual refactoring of their code. At JetBrains, our goal is to fully support…

Refactoring is a common software engineering practice that improves code quality without altering program behavior. Although tools like ReExtractor+, RefactoringMiner, and RefDiff have been developed to detect refactorings automatically,…

Technical Debt is a common issue that arises when short-term gains are prioritized over long-term costs, leading to a degradation in the quality of the code. Self-Admitted Technical Debt (SATD) is a specific type of Technical Debt that…

Automating the Extract Method refactoring (EMR) remains challenging and largely manual despite its importance in improving code readability and maintainability. Recent advances in open-source, resource-efficient Large Language Models (LLMs)…

Code quality remains an abstract concept that fails to get traction at the business level. Consequently, software companies keep trading code quality for time-to-market and new features. The resulting technical debt is estimated to waste up…

This Innovative Practice full paper explores how Large Language Models (LLMs) can enhance the teaching of code refactoring in software engineering courses through real-time, context-aware feedback. Refactoring improves code quality but is…

Refactoring is a crucial technique for improving the efficiency and maintainability of software by restructuring its internal design while preserving its external behavior. While classical programs have benefited from various refactoring…

Software implements a significant proportion of functionality in factory automation. Thus, efficient development and the reuse of software parts, so-called units, enhance competitiveness. Thereby, complex control software units are more…

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…

Developing software with the source code open to the public is prevalent; however, similar to its closed counter part, open-source has quality problems, which cause functional failures, such as program breakdowns, and non-functional, such…

Software engineering and information systems practices seek ultimately to create the flawless product. One of the tools used to improve the quality of software development is the use of metrics. In this paper, metrics retrieved from open…

The estimation and improvement of quality attributes in software architectures is a challenging and time-consuming activity. On modern software applications, a model-based representation is crucial to face the complexity of such activity.…

Widely used complex code refactoring tools lack a solid reasoning about the correctness of the transformations they implement, whilst interest in proven correct refactoring is ever increasing as only formal verification can provide true…

Context: Software architecture is a knowledge-intensive field. One mechanism for storing architecture knowledge is the recognition and description of architectural patterns. Selecting architectural patterns is a challenging task for…

Understanding the reasons behind past code changes is critical for many software engineering tasks, including refactoring and reviewing code, diagnosing bugs, and implementing new features. Unfortunately, locating and reconstructing this…

In Software Engineering, early detection of architectural issues is key. It helps mitigate the risk of poor performance, and lowers the cost of repairing these issues. Metrics give a quick overview of the project which helps designers with…

Code metrics are easy to define, but not so easy to justify. It is hard to prove that a metric is valid, i.e., that measured numerical values imply anything on the vaguely defined, yet crucial software properties such as complexity and…

Increasing code velocity is a common goal for a variety of software projects. The efficiency of the code review process significantly impacts how fast the code gets merged into the final product and reaches the customers. We conducted a…

Effective code documentation is essential for collaboration, comprehension, and long-term software maintainability, yet developers often neglect it due to its repetitive nature. Automated documentation generation has evolved from heuristic…