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research-article

Hard-to-answer questions about code

Authors:

Thomas D. LaToza,

Brad A. MyersAuthors Info & Claims

PLATEAU '10: Evaluation and Usability of Programming Languages and Tools

Article No.: 8, Pages 1 - 6

https://doi.org/10.1145/1937117.1937125

Published: 17 October 2010 Publication History

Abstract

To build new tools and programming languages that make it easier for professional software developers to create, debug, and understand code, it is helpful to better understand the questions that developers ask during coding activities. We surveyed professional software developers and asked them to list hard-to-answer questions that they had recently asked about code. 179 respondents reported 371 questions. We then clustered these questions into 21 categories and 94 distinct questions. The most frequently reported categories dealt with intent and rationale -- what does this code do, what is it intended to do, and why was it done this way? Many questions described very specific situations -- e.g., what does the code do when an error occurs, how to refactor without breaking callers, or the implications of a specific change on security. These questions revealed opportunities for both existing research tools to help developers and for developing new languages and tools that make answering these questions easier.

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Cited By

Allen JKelleher CGraziotin DNolte A(2024)An Exploratory Study of Programmers' Analogical Reasoning and Software History Usage During Code Re-PurposingProceedings of the 2024 IEEE/ACM 17th International Conference on Cooperative and Human Aspects of Software Engineering10.1145/3641822.3641864(109-120)Online publication date: 14-Apr-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3641822.3641864
Horvath AMacvean AMyers B(2024)Meta-Manager: A Tool for Collecting and Exploring Meta Information about CodeProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642676(1-17)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3613904.3642676
Ahmad ASandahl KHasselqvist DSandberg PHong JPark J(2024)Information Needs in Continuous Integration and Delivery in Large Scale Organizations: An Observational StudyProceedings of the 39th ACM/SIGAPP Symposium on Applied Computing10.1145/3605098.3636035(1262-1271)Online publication date: 8-Apr-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3605098.3636035
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Hard-to-answer questions about code
1. Social and professional topics
  1. Professional topics
    1. Management of computing and information systems
      1. Software management
        Software maintenance
2. Software and its engineering
  1. Software creation and management
    1. Software post-development issues
  2. Software notations and tools
    1. Development frameworks and environments

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cover image ACM Conferences

PLATEAU '10: Evaluation and Usability of Programming Languages and Tools

October 2010

51 pages

ISBN:9781450305471

DOI:10.1145/1937117

Copyright © 2010 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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SIGPLAN: ACM Special Interest Group on Programming Languages

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New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 17 October 2010

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SPLASH '10

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SIGPLAN

SPLASH '10: Systems Programming Languages and Applications: Software for Humanity

October 17 - 21, 2010

Nevada, Reno

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Cited By

Allen JKelleher CGraziotin DNolte A(2024)An Exploratory Study of Programmers' Analogical Reasoning and Software History Usage During Code Re-PurposingProceedings of the 2024 IEEE/ACM 17th International Conference on Cooperative and Human Aspects of Software Engineering10.1145/3641822.3641864(109-120)Online publication date: 14-Apr-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3641822.3641864
Horvath AMacvean AMyers B(2024)Meta-Manager: A Tool for Collecting and Exploring Meta Information about CodeProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642676(1-17)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3613904.3642676
Ahmad ASandahl KHasselqvist DSandberg PHong JPark J(2024)Information Needs in Continuous Integration and Delivery in Large Scale Organizations: An Observational StudyProceedings of the 39th ACM/SIGAPP Symposium on Applied Computing10.1145/3605098.3636035(1262-1271)Online publication date: 8-Apr-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3605098.3636035
Allen JKelleher C(2024)Exploring the impacts of semi-automated storytelling on programmers’ comprehension of software histories2024 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing (VL/HCC)10.1109/VL/HCC60511.2024.00025(148-162)Online publication date: 2-Sep-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/VL/HCC60511.2024.00025
Armenti CLanza M(2024)Using Interactive Animations to Analyze Fine-grained Software Evolution2024 IEEE Working Conference on Software Visualization (VISSOFT)10.1109/VISSOFT64034.2024.00014(36-47)Online publication date: 6-Oct-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/VISSOFT64034.2024.00014
Alomari HVendome CRizkallah L(2024)A Comprehensive Evaluation Framework of Software Visualizations EffectivenessIEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics10.1109/TVCG.2023.332121130:9(6056-6074)Online publication date: Sep-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/TVCG.2023.3321211
Hasan MTsantalis NAlikhanifard P(2024)Refactoring-aware Block Tracking in Commit HistoryIEEE Transactions on Software Engineering10.1109/TSE.2024.3484586(1-20)Online publication date: 2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/TSE.2024.3484586
Blanco ACórdova ABergel AAlcocer J(2024)Asking and Answering Questions During Memory ProfilingIEEE Transactions on Software Engineering10.1109/TSE.2024.337712750:5(1096-1117)Online publication date: May-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/TSE.2024.3377127
Nguyen TKiyomitsu HSun YNishida TOhtsuki K(2024)Collaborative Learning in Programming Education with the Programmed Visual Contents Comparison Method2024 12th International Conference on Information and Education Technology (ICIET)10.1109/ICIET60671.2024.10542766(467-471)Online publication date: 18-Mar-2024
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Glock JPichler JPinzger M(2024)PASDAJournal of Systems and Software10.1016/j.jss.2024.112037213:COnline publication date: 1-Jul-2024
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