Related papers: Do AI Agents Really Improve Code Readability?
Agentic coding tools, such as OpenAI Codex, Claude Code, and Cursor, are transforming the software engineering landscape. These AI-powered systems function as autonomous teammates capable of planning and executing complex development tasks.…
Well structured and readable source code is a pre-requisite for maintainable software and successful collaboration among developers. Static analysis enables the automated extraction of code complexity and readability metrics which can be…
We are entering a hybrid era in which human developers and AI coding agents work in the same codebases. While industry practice has long optimized code for human comprehension, it is increasingly important to ensure that LLMs with different…
Large language model (LLM) based coding agents increasingly act as autonomous contributors that generate and merge pull requests, yet their real-world effects on software projects are unclear-especially compared with widely adopted…
Agent-based coding tools have transformed software development practices. Unlike prompt-based approaches that require developers to manually integrate generated code, these agent-based tools autonomously interact with repositories to…
Recent advances in coding agents have shown remarkable progress in software issue resolution. In practice, real-world issues are typically bug fixes or feature requests in which human developers naturally incorporate refactoring as part of…
As AI agents increasingly contribute to code development and maintenance, there is still limited empirical evidence on the quality and risk characteristics of their changes in real-world projects, particularly for refactoring-oriented…
As autonomous coding agents see rapid adoption, their evaluation has primarily focused on task completion rates holding the target codebase fixed. This leaves a critical question unanswered: does the structural and stylistic quality, or…
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…
The primary value of AI agents in software development lies in their ability to extend the developer's capacity for reasoning and action, not to supplant human involvement. To showcase how to use agents working in tandem with developers, we…
The integration of AI agents as coding assistants into software development has raised questions about the long-term viability of AI agent-generated code. A prevailing hypothesis within the software engineering community suggests this code…
Refactoring is a constant activity in software development and maintenance. Scale and maintain software systems are based on code refactoring. However, this process is still labor intensive, as it requires programmers to analyze the…
The rapid rise of Large Language Models (LLMs) has changed software development, with tools like Copilot, JetBrains AI Assistant, and others boosting developers' productivity. However, developers now spend more time reviewing code than…
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…
Block-based programming languages like Scratch have become increasingly popular as introductory languages for novices. These languages are intended to be used with a "tinkering" approach which allows learners and teachers to quickly…
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…
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…
Large Language Model (LLM) Agents are advancing quickly, with the increasing leveraging of LLM Agents to assist in development tasks such as code generation. While LLM Agents accelerate code generation, studies indicate they may introduce…
Refactoring is the process of improving the design of existing code by changing its internal structure without affecting its external behaviour, with the main aims of improving the quality of software product. Therefore, there is a belief…
AI-powered coding assistants are rapidly becoming fixtures in professional IDEs, yet their sustained influence on everyday development remains poorly understood. Prior research has focused on short-term use or self-reported perceptions,…