Studying the advancement in debugging practice of professional software developers

Perscheid, Michael; Siegmund, Benjamin; Taeumel, Marcel; Hirschfeld, Robert

doi:10.1007/s11219-015-9294-2

Cited by 83 publications

(61 citation statements)

References 30 publications

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“…Article [18] studied the debugging methods of experienced software developers through short interviews and observation of each of eight participants for several hours during one working day. The most common method among the respondents is "intuitive".…”

Section: Literature Review and Problem Statementmentioning

confidence: 99%

Development of a toolkit for analyzing software debugging processes using the constructive approach

Shynkarenko¹,

Zhevaho²

2020

EEJET

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Constructive-synthesizing modeling and the Process Mining methods in a toolkit to monitor and analyze the software debugging process were applied. Methods for monitoring the development and debugging processes are the basis for improving the level of practical training of students, reducing the time that is used irrationally in the process of software development by a student, and in monitoring the processes of performance of tasks by a teacher. The process of software debugging is seen as a sequence of actions when dealing with relevant tools. Using the methodology of constructive-synthesizing modeling, a constructor for forming a debugging actions log was developed. Based on the constructive model, the extension to the integrated development environment (IDE) Microsoft Visual Studio, in which all debugging actions are recorded in an event log, was designed. During debugging in the IDE, event logs are collected and then a conformance checking of these logs with regard to the reference model is performed. To do this, the ProM (Eindhoven Technical University, Netherlands), a platform for Process Mining methods, is used. By checking compliance, it is possible to compare different debugging processes and recognize behavioral similarities and differences. The main purpose of the developed toolkit is to collect debugging actions from the developer's IDE. By better understanding how students grasp and deal with errors, one can help novices learn to program. Knowing how programmers debug can encourage researchers to develop more practically directed methods, enable teachers to improve their debugging curricula and allow tool developers to adapt the debugger to the actual needs of users. It is practically suggested to use the prepared tools in the software engineering course

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Section: Literature Review and Problem Statementmentioning

confidence: 99%

Development of a toolkit for analyzing software debugging processes using the constructive approach

Shynkarenko¹,

Zhevaho²

2020

EEJET

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“…Subsequently, Siegmund et al created an online survey on "debugging tools, workload, approach and education" [26]. Based on the answers of 303 respondents, they found that "debugging education is still uncommon, but more [...] courses started including it recently."…”

Section: A Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

How developers debug

Beller

Spruit

Zaidman

2017

Preprint

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Debugging software is an inevitable chore, often difficult and more time-consuming than expected, giving it the nickname the " dirty little secret of computer science." Surprisingly, we have little knowledge on how software engineers debug software problems in the real world, whether they use dedicated debugging tools, and how knowledgeable they are about debugging. This study aims to shed light on these aspects by following a mixedmethods research approach. We conduct an online survey capturing how 176 developers reflect on debugging. We augment this subjective survey data with objective observations from how 458 developers use the debugger included in their Integrated Development Abstract-Debugging software is an inevitable chore, often difficult and more time-consuming than expected, giving it the nickname the "dirty little secret of computer science." Surprisingly, we have little knowledge on how software engineers debug software problems in the real world, whether they use dedicated debugging tools, and how knowledgeable they are about debugging. This study aims to shed light on these aspects by following a mixed-methods research approach. We conduct an online survey capturing how 176 developers reflect on debugging. We augment this subjective survey data with objective observations from how 458 developers use the debugger included in their Integrated Development Environments (IDEs) by instrumenting the popular ECLIPSE and INTELLIJ IDEs with our purpose-built plugin WATCHDOG 2.0. To better explain the insights and controversies obtained from the previous steps, we followed up by conducting interviews with debugging experts and regular debugging users. Our results indicate that the the IDE-provided debugger is not used as often as expected, since "printf debugging" remains a feasible choice for many programmers. Furthermore, both knowledge and use of advanced debugging features are low. Our results call to strengthen hands-on debugging experience in Computer Science curricula and can and have already influenced the design of modern IDE debuggers.

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“…DLS '19, October 20, 2019, Athens, Greece Studies and work on debugging acknowledge that mainstream debuggers are not well adapted to several debugging scenarios [3,27,31]. This has led to the appearance of new debugging techniques proposing to augment traditional interactive debuggers with, e.g., stateful breakpoints [4], control-flow aware breakpoints [5], object-centric breakpoints [10,34], the automatic insertion of breakpoints based on dynamic executions [45], or declarative statements from the developer [21].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sindarin: a versatile scripting API for the Pharo debugger

Dupriez

Polito

Costiou

et al. 2019

Proceedings of the 15th ACM SIGPLAN International Symposium on Dynamic Languages

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Debugging is one of the most important and time consuming activities in software maintenance, yet mainstream debuggers are not well-adapted to several debugging scenarios. This has led to the research of new techniques covering specific families of complex bugs. Notably, recent research proposes to empower developers with scripting DSLs, plugin-based and moldable debuggers. However, these solutions are tailored to specific use-cases, or too costly for one-time-use scenarios.In this paper we argue that exposing a debugging scripting interface in mainstream debuggers helps in solving many challenging debugging scenarios. For this purpose, we present Sindarin, a scripting API that eases the expression and automation of different strategies developers pursue during their debugging sessions. Sindarin provides a GDB-like API, augmented with AST-bytecode-source code mappings and objectcentric capabilities. To demonstrate the versatility of Sindarin, we reproduce several advanced breakpoints and non-trivial debugging mechanisms from the literature.

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Studying the advancement in debugging practice of professional software developers

Cited by 83 publications

References 30 publications

Development of a toolkit for analyzing software debugging processes using the constructive approach

Development of a toolkit for analyzing software debugging processes using the constructive approach

How developers debug

Sindarin: a versatile scripting API for the Pharo debugger

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