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Related papers: Designing for Novice Debuggers: A Pilot Study on a…

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For a novice programmer, coding is equivalent to a nightmare. A novice programmer tries to replicate steps provided by the faculty and on compilation gets a number of errors which the novice programmer is not able to resolve. This system…

Computers and Society · Computer Science 2013-10-07 Aniket Bhawkar , Rohit Belsare , Fenil Gandhi , Pratiksha Somani

Bugs are inescapable during software development due to frequent code changes, tight deadlines, etc.; therefore, it is important to have tools to find these errors. One way of performing bug identification is to analyze the characteristics…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2020-06-19 Rudolf Ferenc , Péter Gyimesi , Gábor Gyimesi , Zoltán Tóth , Tibor Gyimóthy

AI-assisted tools support developers in performing cognitively demanding tasks such as bug detection and code readability assessment. Despite the advancements in the technical characteristics of these tools, little is known about how…

Bugs in learners' programs are often the result of fundamental misconceptions. Teachers frequently face the challenge of first having to understand such bugs, and then suggest ways to fix them. In order to enable teachers to do so…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2021-08-17 Luisa Greifenstein , Florian Obermüller , Ewald Wasmeier , Ute Heuer , Gordon Fraser

Debugging CUDA programs has long been challenging because failures often arise from subtle interactions among hardware behavior, compiler decisions, memory hierarchy, and asynchronous execution. More importantly, with the rapid expansion of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-27 Shiyang Li , Haoyang Chen , Mattia Fazzini , Caiwen Ding

The automated program repair field has attracted substantial interest over the years, but despite significant research efforts, creating a system that works well for complex semantic bugs such as security vulnerabilities has proven…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2024-02-26 Berkay Berabi , Alexey Gronskiy , Veselin Raychev , Gishor Sivanrupan , Victor Chibotaru , Martin Vechev

Among areas of software engineering where AI techniques -- particularly, Large Language Models -- seem poised to yield dramatic improvements, an attractive candidate is Automatic Program Repair (APR), the production of satisfactory…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2025-08-05 Li Huang , Ilgiz Mustafin , Marco Piccioni , Alessandro Schena , Reto Weber , Bertrand Meyer

Large language models (LLMs) have been shown to memorize and reproduce content from their training data, raising significant privacy concerns, especially with web-scale datasets. Existing methods for detecting memorization are primarily…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2026-01-07 Zhenpeng Wu , Jian Lou , Zibin Zheng , Chuan Chen

Large Language Models (LLMs) can generate plausible test code. Intuitively they generate this by imitating tests seen in their training data, rather than reasoning about execution semantics. However, such reasoning is important when…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2025-03-12 Philipp Straubinger , Marvin Kreis , Stephan Lukasczyk , Gordon Fraser

Low-code programming allows citizen developers to create programs with minimal coding effort, typically via visual (e.g. drag-and-drop) interfaces. In parallel, recent AI-powered tools such as Copilot and ChatGPT generate programs from…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2023-06-01 Nikitha Rao , Jason Tsay , Kiran Kate , Vincent J. Hellendoorn , Martin Hirzel

Large Language Models (LLMs) based agents are transforming the programming language landscape by facilitating learning for beginners, enabling code generation, and optimizing documentation workflows. Hardware Description Languages (HDLs),…

Hardware Architecture · Computer Science 2025-01-03 Mark Zakharov , Farzaneh Rabiei Kashanaki , Jose Renau

Debugging is a vital but challenging skill for beginner programmers to learn. It is also a difficult skill to teach. For secondary school teachers, who may lack time or programming experience, honing students' understanding of debugging can…

Computers and Society · Computer Science 2026-04-01 Laurie Gale , Sue Sentance

Debugging consumes a substantial portion of the software development lifecycle, yet the effectiveness of Large Language Models(LLMs) in this task is not well understood. Competitive programming offers a rich benchmark for such evaluation,…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2026-03-23 Nabiha Parvez , Tanvin Sarkar Pallab , Mia Mohammad Imran , Tarannum Shaila Zaman

Large Language Models (LLMs) have demonstrated exceptional coding capability. However, as another critical component of programming proficiency, the debugging capability of LLMs remains relatively unexplored. Previous evaluations of LLMs'…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2024-06-07 Runchu Tian , Yining Ye , Yujia Qin , Xin Cong , Yankai Lin , Yinxu Pan , Yesai Wu , Haotian Hui , Weichuan Liu , Zhiyuan Liu , Maosong Sun

As Large Language Models (LLMs) gain in popularity, it is important to understand how novice programmers use them. We present a thematic analysis of 33 learners, aged 10-17, independently learning Python through 45 code-authoring tasks…

Human-Computer Interaction · Computer Science 2023-09-26 Majeed Kazemitabaar , Xinying Hou , Austin Henley , Barbara J. Ericson , David Weintrop , Tovi Grossman

Visualization authoring is an iterative process requiring users to adjust parameters to achieve desired aesthetics. Due to its complexity, users often create defective visualizations and struggle to fix them. Many seek help on forums (e.g.,…

Human-Computer Interaction · Computer Science 2026-02-05 Shuyu Shen , Sirong Lu , Leixian Shen , Yuyu Luo

While professional integrated programming environments support developers with advanced debugging functionality, block-based programming environments for young learners often provide no support for debugging at all, thus inhibiting…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2023-09-27 Adina Deiner , Gordon Fraser

Grading project reports are increasingly significant in today's educational landscape, where they serve as key assessments of students' comprehensive problem-solving abilities. However, it remains challenging due to the multifaceted…

Human-Computer Interaction · Computer Science 2025-08-19 Zixin Chen , Jiachen Wang , Yumeng Li , Haobo Li , Chuhan Shi , Rong Zhang , Huamin Qu

Immediate feedback has been shown to improve student learning. In programming courses, immediate, automated feedback is typically provided in the form of pre-defined test cases run by a submission platform. While these are excellent for…

Identifying logical errors in complex, incomplete or even contradictory and overall heterogeneous data like students' experimentation protocols is challenging. Recognizing the limitations of current evaluation methods, we investigate the…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2024-09-20 Arne Bewersdorff , Kathrin Seßler , Armin Baur , Enkelejda Kasneci , Claudia Nerdel