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Related papers: Do AI Agents Really Improve Code Readability?

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In the first half of 2025, coding agents have emerged as a category of development tools that have very quickly transitioned to the practice. Unlike ''traditional'' code completion LLMs such as Copilot, agents like Cursor, Claude Code, or…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2026-04-09 Romain Robbes , Théo Matricon , Thomas Degueule , Andre Hora , Stefano Zacchiroli

Producing code of good quality is an essential skill in software development. Code quality is an aspect of software quality that concerns the directly observable properties of code, such as decomposition, modularization, and code flow. Code…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2024-11-06 Eduardo Carneiro Oliveira , Hieke Keuning , Johan Jeuring

Performance optimization is a critical yet challenging aspect of software development, often requiring a deep understanding of system behavior, algorithmic tradeoffs, and careful code modifications. Although recent advances in AI coding…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2025-12-29 Huiyun Peng , Antonio Zhong , Ricardo Andrés Calvo Méndez , Kelechi G. Kalu , James C. Davis

The rapid adoption of AI coding agents for software development has raised important questions about the quality and maintainability of the code they produce. While prior studies have examined AI-generated source code, the impact of AI…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2026-01-26 Anwar Ghammam , Mohamed Almukhtar

Agentic AI systems can now generate code with remarkable fluency, but a fundamental question remains: \emph{does the generated code actually do what the user intended?} The gap between informal natural language requirements and precise…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2026-03-19 Shuvendu K. Lahiri

Fine-tuning large language models for code editing has typically relied on mining commits and pull requests. The working hypothesis has been that commit messages describe human intent in natural language, and patches to code describe the…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2026-03-30 Yangtian Zi , Zixuan Wu , Aleksander Boruch-Gruszecki , Jonathan Bell , Arjun Guha

AI coding assistants and autonomous agents are becoming integral to software development workflows, reshaping how code is produced, reviewed, and maintained. While recent research has focused mainly on the capabilities and impacts of…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2026-05-07 Christoph Treude

AI-powered web agents have the potential to automate repetitive tasks, such as form filling, information retrieval, and scheduling, but they struggle to reliably execute these tasks without human intervention, requiring users to provide…

Human-Computer Interaction · Computer Science 2026-01-27 Yimeng Liu , Misha Sra , Jeevana Priya Inala , Chenglong Wang

Advances in technologies like artificial intelligence and metaverse have led to a proliferation of software systems in business and everyday life. With this widespread penetration, the carbon emissions of software are rapidly growing as…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2025-06-12 Rohit Mehra , Priyavanshi Pathania , Vibhu Saujanya Sharma , Vikrant Kaulgud , Sanjay Podder , Adam P. Burden

The rise of large language models for code has reshaped software development. Autonomous coding agents, able to create branches, open pull requests, and perform code reviews, now actively contribute to real-world projects. Their growing…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2026-04-02 Razvan Mihai Popescu , David Gros , Andrei Botocan , Rahul Pandita , Prem Devanbu , Maliheh Izadi

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

Software development agents such as Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, Cursor Agent, Devin, and OpenAI Codex are being increasingly integrated into developer workflows. While prior work has evaluated agent capabilities for code completion and…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2026-05-26 Lukas Ottenhof , Daniel Penner , Abram Hindle , Thibaud Lutellier

GenAI solutions like GitHub Copilot have been shown to increase the productivity of software developers. Yet prior work remains unclear on the quality of code produced and the challenges of maintaining it in software projects. If quality…

General Economics · Economics 2026-01-29 Feiyang Xu , Poonacha K. Medappa , Murat M. Tunc , Martijn Vroegindeweij , Jan C. Fransoo

The rise of AI agents is transforming how software can be built. The promise of agents is that developers might write code quicker, delegate multiple tasks to different agents, and even write a full piece of software purely out of natural…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2025-12-17 Ruanqianqian Huang , Avery Reyna , Sorin Lerner , Haijun Xia , Brian Hempel

Agentic AI and Multi-Agent Systems are poised to dominate industry and society imminently. Powered by goal-driven autonomy, they represent a powerful form of generative AI, marking a transition from reactive content generation into…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2025-12-29 Brian Bowers , Smita Khapre , Jugal Kalita

With software maintenance accounting for 50% of the cost of developing software, enhancing code quality and reliability has become more critical than ever. In response to this challenge, this doctoral research proposal aims to explore…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2024-06-25 Fernando Vallecillos Ruiz

Background. Refactoring is a critical task in software maintenance and is generally performed to enforce the best design and implementation practices or to cope with design defects. Several studies attempted to detect refactoring activities…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2020-09-15 Eman Abdullah AlOmar , Mohamed Wiem Mkaouer , Ali Ouni , Marouane Kessentini

AI coding agents are increasingly acting as autonomous contributors by generating and submitting pull requests (PRs). However, we lack empirical evidence on how these agent-generated PRs differ from human contributions, particularly in how…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2026-04-07 Daniel Ogenrwot , John Businge

For six decades, software engineering principles have been optimized for a single consumer: the human developer. The rise of agentic AI development, where LLM-based agents autonomously read, write, navigate, and debug codebases, introduces…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2026-04-10 Dmytro Ustynov

AI coding assistants are now central to professional software development, yet their impact on how developers think about and practice security remains poorly understood. While prior work has documented vulnerability rates in AI-generated…